Last 30 years shows climate feedbacks are zero (at best)

Let’s be as generous as we can.

The IPCC say feedbacks amplify CO2′s warming by a factor of about three.

Without the amplification from positive feedback there is no crisis

So being nice people, let’s assume it’s warmed since 1979 and assume that it was all due to carbon dioxide. If so, that means feedbacks are …. zero. There goes that prediction of 3.3ºC.
Feedbacks are the name of the game. If carbon dioxide doesn’t trigger off powerful positive feedbacks, there was and is no crisis. Even James Hansen would agree — inasmuch as he himself said that CO2 would directly cause about 1.2ºC of warming if it doubled, without any feedbacks (Hansen 1984).

Consider the warming from1979 to 2007, when we measured temperatures using satellites and not corrupted and adjusted land thermometers. Douglass and Christy (2008) point out that, given how much CO2 levels increased in that time, the warming only amounts to what the IPCC scientists predict we should get from CO2 alone, from the direct effect of CO2, and not from the effect of CO2 plus positive feedbacks.

The warming trend expected from CO2 without any feedbacks at all is 0.07 ºC/decade. The trends from the UAH satellites are 0.06±0.01ºC/decade. Since the two figures are almost the same, no one needs a super-computer to tell them that this implies that the sum of all feedbacks (and the sum of all fears) is zip, nada, nothing.

Furthermore, this study likely overestimates the effect of CO2. There is clearly a 60 year cycle of warming and cooling due to the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, and the 28 year study period was the steepest part of that 60 year cycle. Hence, trends over longer periods are likely to be smaller, which implies that feedbacks are negative.

Thus the upper bound on climate sensitivity (the temperature rise when CO2 doubles) from the last three decades of warming is about 1°C, and that’s assuming all the warming is due to CO2 increases and not due to other factors like solar magnetic effects, cosmic radiation, ocean current oscillations, or geomagnetic forces. Which is much less than the IPCC median estimate of 3.3°C.

The Douglass and Christy paper of 2008 has a good discussion on why UAH is a better data source than RSS, and why both satellites are better than the surface measures. It also discusses why the pattern of warming of Earth does not fit the “fingerprint” expected of the planetwide heating that would be caused by a well mixed gas such as carbon dioxide:

CO2 ought to warm at all latitudes, but the northern hemisphere outside the tropics is warming four times as fast as the tropics, and twice as fast as the globe. (So some other effect is warming the Northern Hemisphere.)

The tropical warming appears to correlate well with ENSO effects but not with CO2.

CO2 has risen in a linear fashion. There is not necessarily an underlying linear warming trend. Some analysis suggests the rise is a step change.

Abstract
The global atmospheric temperature anomalies of Earth reached a maximum in 1998 which has not been exceeded during the subsequent 10 years. The global anomalies are calculated from the average of climate effects occurring in the tropical and the extratropical latitude bands. El Niño/La Niña effects in the tropical band are shown to explain the 1998 maximum while variations in the background of the global anomalies largely come from climate effects in the northern extratropics. These effects do not have the signature associated with CO2 climate forcing. However, the data show a small underlying positive trend that is consistent with CO2 climate forcing with no-feedback.

259 comments to Last 30 years shows climate feedbacks are zero (at best)

Current historical knowledge indicates that this planet has gone from ice ages to warm periods on a regular basis.
In fact the ice core records show rapid warming periods of about 20,000 years followed by gradual cooling of about 100,000 years.

This is an indication of NET NEGATIVE FEEDBACK.

If the claims of net positive or net zero feedbacks are correct, that would mean the historical cycles will be broken. This is a massive claim that needs to be backed up by strong empirical evidence.
ANYONE GOT ANY?

Exactly – and I wish some politicians could shout about the ‘DENIER DENIER DENIER’ noise and say ‘but wait, this whole catastrophic thing – it relies on positive feedbacks. These aren’t apparent in the data. We could have this thing wrong. Let’s stop and wait and see what scientist come up with’.

For the rabid warmists and catastrophists, even 0.01c of warming is the harbinger of the end of the world. People should be saying ‘look, this little bit of warming, it’s not net negative for the world, whereas all this money wasted on inefficient energy, it is most definitely net negative’.

Ahhh yes the infamous Milankovitch cycles, invoked by alarmists who make claims but can’t answer questions about those claims.

For example, when asked how is it that the planet can get out of ice ages when CO2 levels are low, they answer that the Milankowitch cycles initiate a warming which leads to more CO2 release into the atmosphere and this CO2 takes over as the forcing for further warmth.

So I ask you MattB…

WHICH MILANKOVITCH CYCLE?
WHAT IS THE TIME FRAME?
HOW STRONG IS IT. WHAT IS ITS FORCING LEVEL?

Its easy to invoke any old bullshit on unsuspecting doo gooders wishing to save the planet, but it’s another to put forward a theory and have it tested.

I made the observation that this planet has gone through regular cycles of warming and cooling with a bias towards cooling. If net feedbacks were positive then a forcing which leads the planet to the depths of an ice age would be reinforced by feedbacks and the planet would never recover. The same applies to a warming.

“If net feedbacks were positive then a forcing which leads the planet to the depths of an ice age would be reinforced by feedbacks and the planet would never recover.”

Again this is not true. It would simply never “recover” until some other forcing pushed it in the other direction. One could easily look at the historical record and come to an assumption that in fact we are in a cycle of forcing A changing temp, leading to feedbacks that compound that change, where we reside until Forcing A (say it was a cycle) pushes us the other way, which leads to feedbacks, taking us further where we remain until focing A changes its mind.

I maintain that there is no clear argument in your post that would suggest either positive or negative feedbacks, as the cycles are not internal to the system but external forcings.

Your post seems to suggest that Milankovich cycles are some sort of fabrication of warmista science? I think not.

Lets try this Matt. According to the Hansen blurb linked to above, feedbacks lead to a warming as high as 4DegC for a doubling of CO2.

Our 3-D global climate model yields a warming of ~4°C for either a 2 percent increase of So or doubled CO2. This indicates a net feedback factor of f = 3-4, because either of these forcings would cause the earth’s surface temperature to warm 1.2-1.3°C to restore radiative balance with space, if other factors remained unchanged. Principal positive feedback processes in the model are changes in atmospheric water vapor, clouds and snow/ice cover

If feedbacks are larger than the original forcing, then removing that forcing is not enough to return the system to its original position.

This is the position Hansen has been preaching all along. His claims of X years before the point of no return etc comes from this forcing feedback relationship.
Invoking some unknown/unquantified phenomena to cover the holes in an argument doesn’t wash.

Our records show, whatever causes the planet to move to a warming regime is reversed and whatever causes the planet to move to a cooling regime is also reversed, both scenarios in a cyclical fashion. THIS MEANS FEEDBACKS CANNOT BE DOMINANT.

And no, I do not “suggest that Milankovi(t)ch cycles are some sort of fabrication of warmista science”, I suggest Milankovitch cycles are used to cover gaps in warmists arguments.

Humbug it is not the removal of the forcing that returns it to the original condition, it is the occurance of another forcing in the opposite direction that does that.

To me the long term temperature record demonstrates that the planet is suitable for human civilisation for only a small fraction of conditions that occur over the various cycles of temperature. So whether or not the overall system is one of positive or negative feedback the earth is quite capable of shifting to climatic conditions that are most inhospitable for a successful global human civilisation. There is nothing in the temperature record that suggests some sort of miracle feedback will keep conditions humky dory for human civilisation… in fact the crystal clear evidence is that the opposite is the reality.

Cohers I’m not sure what it is you think I don’t understand? I am fully away what a negative feedback is.

Your graph does not suggest a regulated negative feedback situation, it suggests wild swings from one extreme to another. Which points on that graph give you the confidence that the climate self-regulates via negative feedbacks around a situation that is great for human civilisation.

Since it’s obvious you are never going to give us a “Plan B” outside of your opinion that people starving and freezing to death should wear a jumper, how about instead you give us an empirically established (ie NOT a computer model) example of a natural, sustainable, positive feedback relative to the study of climate?

I mean, nearly every piece of crap reply you have thus far posted on this thread relies on the existence of such; it surely isn’t too much to ask for an example.

There are NO extremes on the graph; that is my point; over 100′s of millions of years a temperature range of just 10C indicates that the climate on this planet is incredibly stable despite all sorts of external perturbations such as asteroids, orbital variations, TSI fluctuations, volcanoes etc.

Now we have a collective of assorted morons telling us that a slight increase in CO2, which may even be natural, is going to fry the planet to a crisp.

It would be true to say: if we were to discover that one or more non-GHG forcings (eg. orbital, solar-magnetic) had, unbeknown to us, acted so precisely in magnitude and direction as to cancel the warming from GHG feedbacks that would otherwise have occurred, then: the warmists were not in error to say the GHG feedbacks were real or in calculating their magnitude.

However, they would clearly still have been in error in failing to identify and account for the counter-acting (non-GHG) forcings, and, more importantly, obviously ARE in error in their predictions of dangerous global warming – whatever the reasons for the error.

The ‘equal and opposite non-GHG forcings’ argument is a possible ‘get-out-of-jail’ card. Another is that all the warming predicted by the models has happened but it is hiding in the deep oceans in places where we have yet not looked…

So it’s at least a 3-way choice:

(1) non-GHG forcings have acted incredibly precisely and simultaneously both in magnitude and in direction to cancel the predicted warming that would otherwise have occurred.

(2) the warming really has happened but the extra heat has bypassed the satellites monitoring the atmosphere and the land-based thermometers and the ARGOS looking for it in the ocean surface layers.

(3) the assumptions of GHG feedbacks and the modelling predictions arising from those assumptions were about dangerous warming trends were wrong.

On the balance of probabilities, I side with JoNova and opt for choice (3).

And so should our Government if, as they claim, they base their policy decisions on the scientific evidence and balance of probability, and stop wasting vast sums of our money on pointless ‘de-carbonisation’ programmes and subsidies, on boondoggles to mates and favoured interests, and, of course, shelve the planned highway robbery known as the carbon tax due to begin in July.

“To me the long term temperature record demonstrates that the planet is suitable for human civilisation for only a small fraction of conditions that occur over the various cycles of temperature.”

That’s rubbish. That is only true for the extreme locations of heat and cold eg. in the deserts/ at or near the poles (even now) or in locations covered by ice during ice ages.

But for most of the geological record and in most locations on Earth, conditions have been FAR more conducive (warmer) to life than it is now. So, as long as there’s enough O2 for us and CO2 for the plants and useful microbes – then humans will thrive.

It is uninformed, alarmist BS like this that has led to all the thievery and silliness. Please stop it. you’re not impressing anyone MattB.

“But for most of the geological record and in most locations on Earth, conditions have been FAR more conducive (warmer) to life than it is now. So, as long as there’s enough O2 for us and CO2 for the plants and useful microbes – then humans will thrive.”

If it’s poodles you want to talk to Cohers how about you take apart this absurd statement.

Cohenite if there we no extremes on that graph then why are you worried about whether feedbacks are positive or negative. Is your argument that the earth will be quite comfortable even up at the 25C average temp end of the scale, or at the most brutally pulverizing ice age conditions that have been experienced. Pull the other one it’s got bells on. Is your argument that CO2 will not cause warming, or even if it caused 12C average warming we’d all continue on happy as larry. Seriously if that is not what you think please explain that, and then make a correction to what you have posted.

The temperature range is 10C; that does not constitute or justify the existence for +ve feedbacks; perhaps the term ‘feedback’ is the problem; maybe we should say homeostatic factors; would that be helpful for you?

Alternatively, you show me evidence from any time period where there has been a runnaway, non-restorative period connected to extra energy in the system from any source.

Humbug it is not the removal of the forcing that returns it to the original condition, it is the occurance of another forcing in the opposite direction that does that.

Another forcing Matt? Even while the original forcing is still acting? Pray tell what that forcing might be, how big is it, what time frame does it operate?
I state that the warmists make things up to cover the holes in their theory, so what does Matt do? He makes things up. UNFRIGGINGBELIEVABLE

Matt further quips…

To me the long term temperature record demonstrates that the planet is suitable for human civilisation for only a small fraction of conditions that occur over the various cycles of temperature. So whether or not the overall system is one of positive or negative feedback the earth is quite capable of shifting to climatic conditions that are most inhospitable for a successful global human civilisation.

In the current Eden like, “fragile”, never to be repeated offer by Gaia conditions we see the ends of the Earth frozen over with ice at -50DegC or less, to tropical heavens around 30DegC with various pockets of extreme cold/warm and wet/dry, yet humans thrive and flourish. Alaska is a little more crowded than 1 person per 1000 square miles, THANKS TO MODERN CIVILIZATION AND THE HARNESSING OF FIRE.

Oh, by the way, I’m so very surprised at you mentioning “successful global human civilization”. I thought modern humans were sending Gaia to hell in a handbasket. DO YOU REALLY MEAN MODERN HUMANS ARE SUCCESSFUL OR WAS THAT JUST A SLIP OF THE TONGUE?

And Matty finishes with..

There is nothing in the temperature record that suggests some sort of miracle feedback will keep conditions humky dory for human civilisation… in fact the crystal clear evidence is that the opposite is the reality.

This is where the eco nuts and office bound wannabe world savers like Matt get things bassackward.

The planet doesn’t keep conditions of any sort for living beings of any sort. The planet is what it is. It doesn’t give a shit about what’s living off of its back.
IT IS THE LIVING BEINGS THAT ADAPT TO WHATEVER THE PLANET DISHES OUT. What doesn’t adapt gets to join the list of has beens.

Anyway, you’re shifting the discussion as you usually do. Forcings and feedbacks.

Educate me cohers and humbug… since I don’t actually read science papers… what kind of ultimate temp increases are the Hansens and IPCCs of the world saying will happen?

Humbug specifically – well CO2 is an approx increase per doubling, and it is a log scale… so even CO2 has a point where it has precious little additional effect. I only assume that would be the case for other feedbacks… eg reduced reflection from loss of polar oce caps… well once they are gone for example then that feedback isn;t going to get any worse. If there was a feedback (+ or -) from clouds, well at some point the effect of an additional cloud is essentially zero.

So just how hot to the mainstreamers think it will actually get?

I have to say though I think you are underestimating just what a temp increase of 10C would do to civilisation. I mean have you seriously considered the wide range of conditions the earth has experienced in the past – much higher and much lower seal levels just for one example. The EVIDENCE is mass extinctions – it is not something I’ve made up. You guys are seriously dreaming if you think that we could cope with an extra 10C.

“The planet doesn’t keep conditions of any sort for living beings of any sort. The planet is what it is. It doesn’t give a shit about what’s living off of its back.” well at least there’s something we can agree 100% on. I’m glad you are paying attention.

“Alternatively, you show me evidence from any time period where there has been a runnaway, non-restorative period connected to extra energy in the system from any source.”

Well it is clear that there has not been… at least not one that some other forcing has dominated eventually (note that other forcing is not a feedback, it is just a forcing eg orbital cycles and the like that are perfectly* well understood)

I’m not actually wedded to the idea that AGW will result in “runaway” warming outside the temp ranges as shown in your graphs. To me heading to the warm extremes of that graph over relatively short periods of time would be devastating to civilisation. War, famine, infrastructure$$$, we would be crippled. At best it would be like some Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome scenario. And yes I do happen to be of the opinion all it would take is a couple more doublings of CO2. I take precious little comfort in the idea that at least it may not actually runaway beyond that point.

Baa can you point to a time where human civilisation has adapted to a 10 degree increase in temps (as per Coher’s graphs and Andrew’s opinion it would be great for us?

You say, Baa, I’m switching, but I’m not… I’m just genuinely interested in this “new” opinion being voiced by yourself and Cohers that a relatively swift change to the warmest conditions ever known on the planet would be a walk in the park to adapt to… you see I thought the argument was that the feedbacks reduce the response to CO2e increases… not that it doesn’t matter even if they don’t as 10C warmer would be just groovy.

Jo – go on – would you care to share what you think would happen to civilisation if the planet warmed by 10-15 degrees. so that it was as hot as it has ever been, over say 200 years? Forget why it happened – the record says it has been that hot before and undoubtedly it will be that hot again. What’s your opinion…. open question to anyone who cares to answer?

“Oh, by the way, I’m so very surprised at you mentioning “successful global human civilization”. I thought modern humans were sending Gaia to hell in a handbasket. DO YOU REALLY MEAN MODERN HUMANS ARE SUCCESSFUL OR WAS THAT JUST A SLIP OF THE TONGUE?” why would that surprise you i the slightest? your self regulating planet is far more Gaia based than my view of the planet. of course we are successful.

“Baa can you point to a time where human civilisation has adapted to a 10 degree increase in temps (as per Coher’s graphs and Andrew’s opinion it would be great for us?”

—————-

Are you being deliberately obtuse MattB?

I adapted to a 10 deg C increase in temperature only yesterday. Looks like I might have to do the same again today. And I do it regularly as the seasons change or when I occasionally move between hemispheres or between Tasmania and Queensland at certain times of the year.

Here’s a clue: in winter, humans in civilised places (simply defined as access to plentiful and cheap energy) use electrical energy to heat their buildings with specialised equipment called ‘heaters’ which come in a vriety of types (radiative, conductive); in the winter or on cold days at other times, they put on more insulative clothing when they go out in the cold conditions of the (uncivilised) environment.

In the summer they use other gadgets that convert electrical energy into kinetic energy to operate fans and a/c’s to cool their buildings; and they wear light, airy clothes when they go out into the hot environment.

This list of adaptations is not exhaustive. Perhaps Centrelink have a booklet on this where you can find some more tips.

you will note that my definition of civilisation is ‘access to plentiful and cheap energy’ for use in doing various types of work (heating, cooling, digging, washing etc.) as it’s what separates us from the raw beauty of nature and, sadly, those humans around the world who are yet to enjoy the fruits of civilisation*.

Actually, i’m now wondering given your frequent referal to ‘civilistion’ whether you are one of those internet robots – seeking to sharpen his human identity algorithms…

* this doesn’t include feral tree-huggers who like a nice hot bath same as anyone. The only difference is in their case, they expect someone else to buy the bath, run the bath and pay the electricity bill every quarter.

Yikes; mattyb has cloned himself and is now everywhere; he is the John Malkovitch of this blog!

A couple of things; matty says this:

I’m not actually wedded to the idea that AGW will result in “runaway” warming outside the temp ranges as shown in your graphs.

Too bad; your hero Hansen is; it’s called the Venus syndrome. And Hansen is not the only one; there are any number of papers claiming that AGW will cause temperature increases of more than 12C!

These guys are deranged! Or/and deliberately trying to sow public disquite; in either case they should be locked in public stocks for people to throw apple cores at them. A little test matty; why is the Sherwood, “wet bulb” concept hopelessly wrong?

a relatively swift change to the warmest conditions ever known on the planet

These are called Dansgaard-Oeschger events and are well documented, although their cause is still unknown but certainly not anything to do with CO2 levels. So, what matty is saying, and indeed AGW exponents, particularly Glickson, is that increasing CO2 will trigger O-D events; this will mean that a hitherto unknown capacity of CO2 levels will produce an event which has never been associated with CO2 levels!

Actually Cohers I was simply being astounded by claims that IF CO2 DID take us to the extremes of temps as per your graphs in a relatively short space of time that it didn’t really matter and civilisation would not only carry on happily but may even benefit.

Andrew your comments regarding the difference between day time and night time temps are seriously deluded. We can argue about sensitivity, argue about feedbacks, but seriously lets not pretend that a 10 – 15C rise in average global temperature would be excellent for civilisation.

Cohers – no one said CO2 will trigger a Dansgaard-Oeschger event, although my understanding is that they are not responsible for the swings on your graph but are a tad more short term. At least they are not the only things responsible. It may well cause a “D-O like” event though. The thing is though we don’t need a 10-15 degree rise to screw us over, far less will do that. My interpretation is that a temp rise of 3-5C would be fairly catastrophic simply in terms of crop production and human dislocation, nowmatter what ever else goes with that.

I was simply being astounded by claims that IF CO2 DID take us to the extremes of temps as per your graphs in a relatively short space of time that it didn’t really matter and civilisation would not only carry on happily but may even benefit.

The irony about this statement, Matt, is that at our present level of technological advancement, we would readily be able to adapt to even fairly rapid changes in global temperature, sea level, etc, PROVIDED that our energy sources were not compromised through political interference or avoidance of proven, cheap energy sources in favour of intermittent, unreliable, expensive sources.

Not only is the equation- energy=food for the starving millions, it also is energy=adaptability for those experiencing climate extremes,energy=progress for the development of advanced technologies to meet the challenges of humanity’s survival. In short, energy=human “sustainability”.

I think, Matt, one would call that the Catch 22 of the Climate Change debate- that the very prescription for this terrifying disaster you believe is occurring actually undermines our ability to adapt to it. So even if you are correct, you’ve actually prevented humanity from efficiently counteracting it’s effects- so, bravo! Well played, sport.

“We” is Western civilisation or the First World economies (soon to be joined by China and India), which Green polemicists hope to tear down. The only reason that the masses can’t be fed in this day and age is purely geopolitical, not due to a lack of resources or to a lack of technology- that is the tragedy of it. And people such as yourself with Luddite attitudes only exaggerate this disgraceful state of affairs, rather than ameliorate it.

In Africa for example, China is showing the way, all it would take to allow this to prosper further is for the West to get it’s economic act together and join competitively in developing the natural resources Africa enjoys, and build the appropriate infrastructure in those nations politically stable enough to allow it, and the flow on effect of prosperity would mean even greater political stability and better education, sanitation etc for the populace.

But of course this would create too much CO2- we’d better stop that, right Matt!

MattB, it is you who is deluded. Where do you get this childish nonsense of crop losses and mass starvation with a 3-5C rise in avge global temperature?

I bet it was from one of Tim Flannery’s silly novels. Well, you can see how well his predictions of endless drought in eastern Australia have panned-out can’t you? It was in no small way thanks to his public hysteria that billions of tax payers money was wasted on now moth-balled desal plants and foolish policy re the Murray Darling and irrigation permits. What was he saying about 8-storey high sea-levels decimating coastal property… he then went and bought himself a nice little waterfront place on the Hawkesbury – only accessible by boat – presumably his idea of keeping the angry crowds at bay if Gaia didn’t follow the script. That’s right… he is a real fan of the Gaia fairytales – something about Earth now having a nervous system etc. etc. Fruity as bat poo old Tim. But he’s not daft – he’s well cashed-up now.

Humanity will prosper with a 3-5C. Rising temperatures are good for life – again study the record. Where did all that coal and gas and oil come from Matty. It’s falling temperatures that problematic. History is clear on it. A period of rapid COOLING – which unfortuantely now looks to be on the cards – is what will lead to contracted growing seasons and reduced crop yields and wide-spread hunger. Of course, when that starts to become apparent you and your fantasist chums will be out there occupying some place demanding the government save the world from global cooling! It’s time to wise-up Matty. Don’t be a chump all your life.

It is amazing that we’d have the technology or $$$ to adapt when we barely have the $$ to feed the masses today.

Currently our future will be – with a CO2 Tax:

1. The UN, Greens etc will have all the $$
2. Industry, manufacturing and farming in Australia will decrease.
3. CO2 Tax Billions will be spent on biofuels, windmills, solar and wave etc
4. Arable land available for food will be reduced.

Question… why would skeptics be desperate to demonstrate that feedbacks are negative and that the temp increases forecast by the IPCC and warmist scientists are erroneously large, when even 5C per doubling of CO2e would just lead the planet to happy land?

Why oh why would people not just argue that a warmer planet would be wonderful.

(Hint – BECAUSE THE IDEA THAT A 5-10 DEGREE WARMER WORLD WOULD BE WONDERFUL IS BALONEY!)

Matt, Oh Matt!
Logic fallacy number 154.
Skeptics are not desperate about the climate, period.
Skeptics are not concerned at all by the global temperature rising by 5 degrees, nor do they believe that will occur as a result of human activities in general, nor CO2 in particular.
What gets our knickers in a twist is sweeping scientific statements without logical support, wild predictions without due diligence or realistic assessment of the facts at hand. More to the point, we are “desperate” to prevent draconian tax regimes introduced with the sole purpose of concentrating wealth to the top 0.1% of the population, stealing from the middle class to send the bourgeois upstarts back to poverty row where they belong, send millions of African poor on the verge of starvation over the edge through rising fuel and food prices, entrenching poverty and restricting development in the third world otherwise, and bringing down the entire foundations of Western civilization, democracy & representational political systems in favor of global oligarchical UN protosocialist dictatorship. Now what are you desperate for Matt?

That is whole lot of assumptions about what a skeptic is or is not concerned about Winston. It seems you are projecting what you are concerned about on to what “skeptics” are concerned about.

“we are “desperate” to prevent draconian tax regimes introduced with the sole purpose of concentrating wealth to the top 0.1% of the population, stealing from the middle class to send the bourgeois upstarts back to poverty row where they belong, send millions of African poor on the verge of starvation over the edge through rising fuel and food prices, entrenching poverty and restricting development in the third world otherwise, and bringing down the entire foundations of Western civilization, democracy & representational political systems in favor of global oligarchical UN protosocialist dictatorship”

do you ever think that some just think the science is a bit uncertain?

Matt,
Find me a skeptic who thinks carbon tax regimes, or carbon trading or an ETS is a good idea. And why is that do you think?

And yes, the vast majority of skeptics believe the science IS uncertain in spite of contrary assertions, that premature ejaculations of the IPCC projections are based on fantasy assumptions generated by computer simulations which fail to quantify the variables accurately and hence are without value, let alone being appropriate to act upon.

And anyone with eyes open can see there are two forms of subterfuge going on, one
political and one scientific, both linked with a “common purpose”. Now where have I
heard that term before I wonder? I don’t think I am projecting my beliefs onto others, as many skeptics understand that CAGW is primarily politically motivated and instigated as an ambit to increase control of the microregulators and their bureaucratic hangers on, as a means to justify their otherwise worthless existence.

It’s odd isn’t it. A cursory look at the temperature trends of the past 600M years shows that life is not only tolerant of much higher temperatures than we presently experience but was demonstrably much, much, much more productive too. Not only for plants but animals too. The Dinosaurs are just one taxa that prove this to be the case.

Matty and his chums make the fallacious claims that a warmer world necessarily means a drier world. It does not. WUWT covered this very recently: the record shows a warmer world is also a wetter world. The data show that the land cover of vegetation has been much higher under warmer conditions than under colder conditions when where there is a much higher proportion of deserts. Yes deserts. And that’s not even including the areas lost to ice, snow and cold tundra.

The “renewables” scamsters still have a problem with solving the problem of storage for solar power. Nature solved that issue for us a very long time ago with the evolution of chloroplasts and eventually plants. Fantastically, this has meant we humans now have access to vast stores of solar energy in the form of fossil fuels. Contrary to the alarmists, these stores will last (at current useage rates) for thousands of years to come.

And it, of course, why civilisation has been possible at all (see posts above). In burning some of these vast stores of solar energy, not only do we benefit today but – and this is the really beautiful bit – in liberating the CO2 from these fossilised plants into the atmosphere, we are providing a supply of plant food for photosynthesis well into the future. Now that’s what I call sustainability. It’s truly beautiful isn’t it?

Even better, as plants fix that CO2 (don’t forget presently we live in a CO2 impoverished world) they liberate oxygen. That’s good for multi-cellular life of all forms – particularly motile life like animals like us. That’s because we need oxygen to power our cells to power our motility andour brains. That’s why, in the warm, O2 rich world of the carbonaceous, insects (and all animals) could grow to such a large size. We presently live in a O2 impoverished world too!

See where i’m heading with this: we can, indeed, have the best of both worlds: lot’s of lovely plant food (CO2) and lots of lovely animal food (O2)! It couldn’t get any better than that! If only the planet would start warming-up… because life tends to work better at temperatures much warmer than now because biological enzymes are more efficient at higher temps than now.

Sadly, the data tell us that we can’t rely on CO2 to warm things up – because the record is clear that it lags temperature change (notwithstanding the recent work of fiction by Shakun et. al. – see WUWT for an expert demolishon of that paper). That happens because CO2 out-gases from warming oceans as they warm (some hundreds of years after the warming atmosphere begins).

More’s the pity though. But hey, we can’t expect to have everything on our plates. Luckily we got lots of coal and gas and oil (= stored sunlight) and civilisations with all its gadgets and structure and order to mitigate the risks inherent in a cooling world… !

Untrue. It is an indication something else, such as Milankovich cycles, dominates internal climate related factors over the longer timeframe. It neither supports nor opposes positive or negative feedbacks.

As usual, you miss the point, Matt! If feedbacks were positive then the Milankovich cycles would have a diminishing effect on temperatures. During each ice age cycle the interglacial’s would be warmer and the glaciations would not be as cold. As the positive feedback continued there would be no more ice ages and instead there would be periods when temperatures were high and there would be periods when temperatures were extremely high. This would continue until the Earth fried to a crisp. Fortunately, positive feedbacks are rare in nature. Perhaps you could cite a few of them for us, Matt?

If there were a positive feedback then there would also need to be some kind of a negative feedback. Otherwise, as I have already stated, temperatures would continue to increase until life on earth ceased to exist. Perhaps you can explain to us what it is that stops this positive feedback from not continuing unabated? The proponents of the hypothesis of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming are constantly screaming about “a tipping point” and “runaway global warming”. If that were the case then there would have to be some mechanism in place to stop global warming from destroying the planet. Perhaps you would care to enlighten us Matt as to what that is? Oh, while you’re at it, could you please find us somewhere in the geological records evidence of catastrophic runaway global warming ever occurring? If it did then why aren’t we all dead?

Great post Jo!
It must be a tough time to be a global warming believer when all of the high priest of global warming keep getting the science, predictions and projections so spectacularly wrong. I doubt very many people on the east coast of Australia feel very strongly about global warming when we have witnessed first hand some of the the coolest years in memory.
It is 8.9 degrees in Melbourne right now and it’s been hailing.

I wonder if the government funded scientists had predicted global cooling (as a result of CO2 emissions with negative feedbacks) they would have been more successful in wipping up the desired levels of fear and alarm.

There were dire predictions of a new Ice Age back in the 1970′s, with blizzards across much of the continental US and Europe. Then it started getting warmer through the 1990′s. And now it is getting cooler again through the 2010′s.

Is there a pattern here, do you think? Could it follow the Solar Cycle? Shirley Knot.

The Warmists now argue that other human influences (i.e. aersol pollution) are limiting the positive feedbacks – for now (of course). It’s a very convenient, yet effictive dodge that can only be disproved over time I think.

The Vostok Ice Cores graphs seem to suggest a remarkable & unprecedented stability over the last c 12,000 years, with the temperature tending to stay high, within +/-2Deg.C., from the last rise. Could that be why CO2 continues to rise ?

Since the mass balance principle applies to the carbon cycle, and since the annual quantity of anthropogenic carbon injected into the atmosphere is double the annual atmospheric increase in carbon content calculated from the 1.2 ppmv/yr rise, it is not possible for nature to be a net source of carbon into the atmosphere. Simple arithmetic. That is based on the numbers that Tom Quirk gathered and was published previously in this blog.

Every year we put +8Gt into the atmosphere from fossil fuel sales.
When we check at the end of five years and average out Mauna Loa to see what the annual increase in carbon content has been, we find it is closer to +4Gt per year.
Since we didn’t absorb the other “missing” 4Gt every year, something else must have absorbed it. Simple math. Nature has been a net sink of our CO2 for the last 40 years. That’s not surprising because nature loves the stuff.

Without industrial influence, Nature would be a net source of CO2 into the atmosphere for exactly the reason you say. It has been many times before, so it would be again. It’s currently not, because the diffusion across the ocean/air interface is being driven in the other direction artificially. Sounds crazy given the size of the ocean, but the numbers don’t support any other interpretation. If you think 4 – 8 > 0 then you need help. If you don’t believe the numbers, talk to Dr. Tom Quirk about where and how he got them.

My own analysis showed that the temperature derivative has a close fit to inter-annual atmospheric carbon increase. (It’s so obvious I didn’t bother to calculate the coefficient.) Note that atmos C content is always going up (positive derivative) even when we have cooler years (negative derivative), which is the opposite of what you would expect if the ocean was the dominant C source in the inter-annual trends, and consistent with the mass-balance argument.

On the intra-annual variation of course the biosphere dominates, but the biosphere decreases the CO2 in warmer weather due to higher plant productivity. Since the interannual CO2 change is proportional to the temperature change, not inversely proportional, we know it is not being driven by a trend in the biosphere. Therefore it is the ocean temperature which is the main source of inter-annual carbon variation.

The ocean changes how much of our carbon it can absorb per year subject to temperature, which both makes sense physically and matches the observations. When the ocean is warmer it can absorb less CO2, but by the mass balance argument it must still be a net carbon sink. Whenever the ocean is cooler, it absorbs more from the atmosphere, and the resulting atmospheric change is less, but is observed to still be positive. From the graph it seems about +1Gt/yr per +0.1°C/yr but the ratio varies a bit.

So now, at some risk of being slightly off by a half gigatonne here and there, here is my hypothesis of what the net annual flows of carbon are between the atmosphere, biosphere, ocean, and industry currently all look like as a carbon cycle picture. As always I invite critics to prove me wrong with observational evidence.

- Climate inertia, the time required to reach equilibrium; it takes a while for (primarily) the oceans to react to forcing changes, so we’re only about 50-60% of the way to equilibrium. And ongoing changes in CO2 are staying ahead of that.

Given these factors, we’re just about where we should expect in terms of warming.

—

Regarding a greenhouse signature, and

CO2 ought to warm at all latitudes, but the northern hemisphere outside the tropics is warming four times as fast as the tropics, and twice as fast as the globe. (So some other effect is warming the Northern Hemisphere.)

Those observations are absolutely what should be expected in terms of polar amplification, and the higher proportion of land to sea in the northern hemisphere. These differences were predicted over a century ago, as in Arrhenius 1896 (pg. 265). Claiming expected signatures of an increased greenhouse effect as evidence against that greenhouse effect is rather silly.

It is remarkable the IPCC and their compliant alarmists scientists can predict disastrous warming to so many degrees C, and point to their computer models for back up. Then, when the actual observations do not support their predictions, they say yes but,but,but…..

KR it is a joke for anyone to the temperature is exactly where it should be, when not a single alarmist climate scientist and their climate models predicted it.

And – they can’t get their models to replicate actual observations over any reasonable length of time without tinkering with variables they can’t measure!

The models which best fit the past 30 years are those which assume natural variability warming – nothing else.

The fact is climate scientists cannot accurately model future climate with so many variables still inadequately understood. At present climate science is blinded by ‘framing’ CO2, and scientists have inadequate knowledge of all negative and positive feedback mechanisms. Combine that with the other poorly understood forcing mechanisms and we have guess work at best!

Hardly a basis for turning our economy upside down and placing ourselves at a distinct disadvantage to our trading partners.

… they can’t get their models to replicate actual observations over any reasonable length of time without tinkering with variables they can’t measure!

And that is the nub of it.

I have been a modeller, and have worked on these types of simulations, and they only ever produce ball-park indications, never “answers”. Increasing the precision of variables only makes the answers more inaccurate because of roundoff issues. But hey, they no longer teach Numerical Methods as a course in its own right.

A rounding bug was discovered in one release of Microsoft Excel, which led to the joke: “Question: What is eighteen divided by three?” “Answer: Six, except for very large values of three”.

Obviously you haven’t heard about Richard Lindzen’s attempts to validate such an hypothesis. Trouble is he had to use tropical temperatures as a subset of the global data to do so. Far fetched, at least, and according to both PNAS and GRL revievers, invalid at science.

Stupiddonkey doesn’t do references Rereke. She has constantly avoided providing them on Andrew Bolt’s blog for the last 4 years.

In fact, her usual tactic when challenged for references is to disappear from the discussion completely (that is if her contributoion wasn’t a single throw-away ‘drive-by’ troll, which is her main means of ‘communication’)…

I do read actually Stupiddonkey… and a link to one of Jo’s posts about how Alarmist reviewers place unreasonable demands on Lindzen with regard to publishing a paper where his findings show AGW is a crock is not proof that he failed to prove his hypothesis.

It instead shows that Alarmist scientists are given free reign to write and publish work that includes deliberate manipulation and outright fraudulent data, while any skeptical scientist is forced to go through more hoops than Shamu and his friends at SeaWorld only to be rejected for being ‘too revolutionary’ (ie: telling the truth and backing it up with facts).

Once again, stupiddonkley fails to provide a link to back up their claims, instead providing more proof of the deliberate stifling of debate conducted by the Alarmist side.

Further to my comment’s to Stupiddonkey about “skeptical scientists having to jump through more hoops than Shamu and friends” and having to face delays of up to 2 YEARS (or more) while their work assessed for “peer review”, I give you the “Fifty-One Day Wonder”, where an Alarmist scientist’s paper is published almost immediately (with thanks to memoryvault who pointed out the timeframe from submission to publication for this paper).

Want to discuss how fair the peer-review process is between Alarmist and skeptical scientists, donkey?

- Climate inertia, the time required to reach equilibrium; it takes a while for (primarily) the oceans to react to forcing changes, so we’re only about 50-60% of the way to equilibrium. And ongoing changes in CO2 are staying ahead of that.

Yes the climate “inertia” bluff. Of course we know how long it takes the “climate” change virtually every day-night cycle. It happens very quickly. Certainly oceans will react more slowly but I’ve seen little research into how warmer water will defy physical properties and sink to store that “missing heat”. How convenient that the warmist side has so many rabbit holes to duck into when the empirical doesn’t exist? So little science goes a long way right?

Here is a small list of SOME of the factors NOT INCLUDED,UNKNOWN or IGNORED for UN-IPCC/CSIRO models:

* the global carbon cycle

* We can’t simulate individual cumulus clouds…

* The same applies to aerosols (“We don’t have the observations and don’t have the theory,” says Gleckler.

The best they can do on this point is to simulate the net effect of all the clouds or aerosols in a grid box, a process known as “parameterization.”)

* Sometimes, modelers don’t understand a process well enough to include it at all, even if they know it could be important.
One example is a caveat that appears on that 2007 IPCC chart. The projected range of sea-level rise…

* What the models don’t try to do is to match the timing of short-term climate variations we’ve experienced.

* But they won’t necessarily show the specific flattening of global warming we’ve observed during the past decade —

* Because the atmosphere is chaotic, anything less than perfect knowledge of today’s conditions (which is impossible, given that observations are always imperfect) will make the forecast useless after about two weeks.

* Even when models reproduce the past reasonably well, however, it doesn’t guarantee that they’re equally reliable at projecting the future.

* That’s in part because some changes in climate are non-linear, which is to say that a small nudge can produce an unexpectedly large result.

In relation to ‘factors’ *2 & *3, clouds, a quick click on one of Jonova’s links to Nigel Calder will give you latest CERN CLOUD information.
This data alone renders all those vague UN-IPCC climate models (re:*2) redundant until it is included.
Not to mention a carbon & oxygen tax.

handjive – Is there uncertainty in the negative aerosol forcing magnitudes? Of course, that’s an area of ongoing research. Does that justify assuming that they are zero, as in the opening post? No! That would be ignoring one of the major factors.

Because the atmosphere is chaotic, anything less than perfect knowledge of today’s conditions (which is impossible, given that observations are always imperfect) will make the forecast useless after about two weeks.

The atmosphere and the climate as a whole are certainly chaotic in nature – a set of nonlinear initial value problems to project exact values, that fails (like weather predictions) more than a short period out. But average behavior and their changes are boundary conditions, limits on the average behavior, and those can be predicted with some skill. Much as we correctly estimate that summers will be warmer than winters…

As an example, consider Los Angeles freeway traffic. Predicting exact volume even a few hours from now (initial value problem) would require exact numbers of cars on the road, perhaps some estimates of how aggressively they are being driven, detailed road conditions, etc. But given some information on population, predictions on neighborhood growth, planned on/off ramp construction, and perhaps the football schedule (for near-stadium effects), you can make an average traffic prediction years down the road.

…a quick click on one of Jonova’s links to Nigel Calder will give you latest CERN CLOUD information.

The CLOUD research is quite interesting, but still many steps from establishing a causal link between cosmic ray nucleation (notably, not correlated in the instrument record with cloud cover) and cloud formation. I am continually dismayed by the tendency for some folks to dismiss masses of evidence (i.e., spectroscopy, the Clausius–Clapeyron relation, satellite spectra of IR) for single unproven studies that support their convictions.

KR, I thought you may have turned up on the Lindzen and Choi thread. Regardless, here you say:

I am continually dismayed by the tendency for some folks to dismiss masses of evidence (i.e., spectroscopy, the Clausius–Clapeyron relation, satellite spectra of IR) for single unproven studies that support their convictions.

There is no doubt there are masses of ‘bits’ of evidence which suggest some foundation fro AGW; for instance noone is denying CO2 is a Photoluminescent gas; but this fact is abused by pro-AGW believers when they ignore Beers Law and a host of limiting factors to CO2′s real life radiative attributes.

More egregiously AGW believers persist in misrepresenting what has actually happened in respect of the ‘developement of AGW ‘science’. Your reference to Arrhenius, who must be turning in his grave at the abuse of his work, above and polar amplification is a classic example. For example, you ignore that Arrhenius made many mistakes:

1 Arrhenius believed that glass enclosures trapped infrared radiation, thus raising the temperature inside. We now know that the absence of convection is the mechanism of greenhouse heating.

2 Arrhenius also believed that CO2 had the same property as glass. But glass and CO2 ABSORB and EMIT infrared, they do not repel it.

3 Arrhenius used measurements of radiation limited to 9.7u and was not measuring the heating effect of CO2 which absorbs primarily at 14.77u; he was in fact measuring water vapour’s heating effect.

4 Arrhenius used as the source for his thermal radiation a source that was at 100C; the radiative spectrum from this source includes the 4.2u wavelength of CO2 that is not part of the Earth’s radiative spectrum, outside the lip of a few volcanoes.

Still Arrhenius was a good scientist and measured the log decline of the heating effect of incremental increases of CO2.

As for ‘polar amplification’, the notion that AGW has predicted the greater temperature increase in the Arctic, if that is right why does Hansen have to manipulate temperature to achieve this; and why, even after this manipulation there has been, effectively no Arctic temperature increase over the 20thC, and certainly none for the last 7 years?

cohenite – Spectroscopy has come a long way in the last 120 years, and Arrhenius’ work still holds up, including the greenhouse effect fingerprints. Your assertions do not:

As for ‘polar amplification’, the notion that AGW has predicted the greater temperature increase in the Arctic, … and why, even after this manipulation there has been, effectively no Arctic temperature increase over the 20thC, and certainly none for the last 7 years?

There are 2 obvious points of difference in the graph presentation; yours uses a more accentuated vertical scale ranging from +2 – -2C anomaly; mine uses a scale of +6 – -8C anomaly. Yours uses a 10 year running average, mine uses a 13 month running average. Your graph smooths the temperature variation by excluding the extra detail in the 13 month average. As a general rule the shorter the moving average the more closely it will reflect actual temperature; since both charts are based on anomalies the trend is already built into the graph. Given this, why would you prefer a longer moving average to represent the temperature trend over the century?

cohenite – Please provide some references for your claims re: Arrhenius. In the meantime, the 3-4C climate sensitivity per CO2 doubling, fingerprints of reduced diurnal range, polar amplification, winter warming faster than summer, faster heating in NH than SH, and the basics of the greenhouse effect as per his available spectroscopic data have been repeatedly affirmed by ongoing work.

WRT your graph – compressing the vertical range does not change the data. As to running averages, the link I provided shows both 10 year and yearly averages – you have nothing to complain about there.

From Worlds in the Making: The Evolution of the Universe (1906), by Svante Arrhenius

…

The heat rays of the sun now are to a large extent of the visible, bright kind. They penetrate through the glass of the hot-house and heat the earth under the glass. The radiation from the earth, on the other hand, is dark and CANNOT PASS BACK THROUGH THE GLASS, which THUS stops any losses of heat, just as AN OVERCOAT PROTECTS THE BODY AGAINST TOO STRONG A LOSS OF HEAT BY RADIATION. Langley made an experiment with a box, which he PACKED WITH COTTON-WOOL TO REDUCE LOSS BY RADIATION…

“Fourier and Pouillet now thought that the atmosphere of our earth should be endowed with properties resembling those of glass, as regards PERMEABILITY OF HEAT. …we have been supplied with very careful observations on the PERMEABILITY TO HEAT OF CARBONIC ACID and of water vapor.

given that the data indicates about 0.7ºC over the 20th century, and over the last decade the temperatures were about 1.0ºC above the 20th century average.

No it doesn’t. Your graph shows a 10 year trend, mine a 13 month one based on monthly average temperatures; yours is based on yearly averages. Yours clearly shows the recent period warmer than the past; mine shows months in the 1930′s warmer than today; obviously the range was greater in the past, which is why, I suppose, you are claiming a reduced diurnal range as evidence for AGW. But think about that for a moment; in the past there were hotter and colder days than today; AGW supposes a reduced diurnal range on the days increasing in temperature but at a lessor rate than the nights; my graph shows the days cooling with the nights warming; that still contradicts your cause.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a pile of dated and circular guesstimates in my life.

I see some interesting postulations regarding thermal transfer to depth against the rather simple reality that warmer water cannot, will not sink. Perhaps you have a “back radiation theory” that operates in liquid H2O?

Actually, I’m not arguing from authority – I’m arguing from the measurements (Argument ad Verum?). If you disagree, then by all means – launch your own ARGO floats, perform thousands of ship soundings, follow the Gulf Current in a research submersible, and present the measurements that support your argument.

You can either recognize measurements that have been made, add to the science with new data, or accept that your contrary statements lack evidentiary support.

“handjive – Is there uncertainty in the negative aerosol forcing magnitudes? Of course, that’s an area of ongoing research. Does that justify assuming that they are zero, as in the opening post? No! That would be ignoring one of the major factors.”

~”Of course, that’s an area of ongoing research.”

Whoa right there!
Uncertainty? Ongoing?
What about ‘the science is settled‘?
Why am I paying a carbon & oxygen tax if the ‘science’ is not ‘settled’?

~But average behavior and their changes are boundary conditions, limits on the average behavior, and those can be predicted with some skill.
Counting cars on the LA freeway might be one example (the irony), but, this is more representative:

This FAILED observation/prediction/projection is created from said UN-IPCC/CSIRO/BOM climate models.

Sorry, KR, I remain ‘skeptical’.

~The CLOUD research is quite interesting, but still many steps from establishing a causal link between cosmic ray nucleation (notably, not correlated in the instrument record with cloud cover) and cloud formation

Please don’t fall into the Argument from Uncertainty; the belief that because we don’t know exactly what a value is that we know nothing at all. That applies to aerosols, to cloud feedback, to climate sensitivity, etc. Even rough knowledge of these issues, and their uncertainties, can provide enough information to make reasoned decisions.

And assuming because of uncertainty that the value of aerosol negative forcing is zero is not supportable – you are making an assumption contrary to the (while still uncertain) evidence that we do have.

—

Your Victoria example is another initial value problem – a short term fairly exact prediction from initial values. Using boundary conditions can enable making reasonably accurate predictions of average Tuesday night traffic in LA several years from now, and a statistical estimate of it’s potential range, but in no fashion enables predicting exact traffic on any particular Tuesday. For climate and boundary conditions you can estimate average temperatures over long periods, not exact temperatures in a particular year/season.

Early results seem to indicate that cosmic rays do cause a change. The high-energy protons seemed to enhance the production of nanometre-sized particles from the gaseous atmosphere by more than a factor of ten. But, Kirkby adds, those particles are far too small to serve as seeds for clouds. “At the moment, it actually says nothing about a possible cosmic-ray effect on clouds and climate, but it’s a very important first step,” he says.

I think I’ll pay attention to the people doing the research regarding those results. I look forward to more from that group, but so far – it’s way out in the zone of tentative minor effects.

Now, I don’t assume “because we don’t know exactly what a value is that we know nothing at all,” but, if…

* “The best they can do on this point is to simulate the net effect of all the clouds or aerosols in a grid box, a process known as “parameterization,or,
* “Sometimes, modelers don’t understand a process well enough to include it at all, even if they know it could be important”or,
” they won’t necessarily show the specific flattening of global warming we’ve observed during the past decade,”

…my understanding of the precautionary principle says stay away from this if they ask for money.

Re: Victoria. Did you notice the chronological order of the links?
How many years of data studied for David Jones (senior, BoM) to say no La Nina back in 2009?Lake Eyre- Now into the 4th year of floods, what chance another La Nina this summer?
5 years of unpredicted floods out of 150 years of mmcO2 = 1 /thirtieth.
Good enough for an average, or a trend?

To employ the car analogy, It is like buying a car.
They say it is the best car and I need it to better my life, but when you look underneath at the brakes, parts are missing and no way will the brakes stop the car.
Yeah, I know the car has brakes.
No sale. Sorry.

And I totally endorse your last quote and paragraph, but would note also this strange quote prior to publication by Rolf-Dieter Heuer, Director General of CERN:

I have asked the colleagues to present the results clearly, but not to interpret them.
That would go immediately into the highly political arena of the climate change debate.
One has to make clear that cosmic radiation is only one of many parameters.

I would recommend looking at some of the aerosol observations(Google “aerosol observations” for just a few). While the data is nowhere near as extensive as I would like it to be (I’m very unhappy about the GLORY satellite failure), claiming “Zero observations” is unjustified.

There’s a lot of uncertainty on aerosols, you might want to look at some of the collected data. But the mean value for the observations (and theory) that we have is a strongly negative influence for both primary (reflective) and indirect (cloud formation based on aerosol nucleation, much as the CLOUD team you espouse is attempting to prove from cosmic ray nucleation) feedbacks. Hence assuming it’s zero is making a leap away from the data.

—

I would agree that the quote from Rolf-Dieter Heuer is quite odd. I suspect it’s based on the rather extensive leaping to conclusions by certain members of the team, and by various members of the public and blogosphere.

handjive – Is there uncertainty in the negative aerosol forcing magnitudes? Of course, that’s an area of ongoing research. Does that justify assuming that they are zero, as in the opening post? No! That would be ignoring one of the major factors

.

There is no justification in assuming anything. Assuming is faith, as in religion whereas emperical data is evidence, as in science. If someone can show empirical evidence that aerosols cause cooling it should be considered . Until then, it is conjecture, not science and certainly not a minor factor, let alone a major one.

Perhaps you can explain the worldwide cooling that occurred during the little ice age? Obviously, it was not aerosols!

Eddy Aruda – An assumption of no influence for a particular factor is a choice, much as deciding not to act in a particular situation is a choice in personal situations.

And in this case, an assumption of no influence for aerosols is far outside the range of the (even somewhat uncertain) data we have. Thus it’s a very strong denial of that evidence – perhaps on faith? On a conjecture?

Personally, when dealing with the world, with facts as we know it, I try to assume the most likely situations, ones supported by the evidence, rather than unlikely values that match my preferences. I consider that realism.

An assumption of no influence for a particular factor is a choice, much as deciding not to act in a particular situation is a choice in personal situations.

I do not assume “no influence”. You have employed a straw man. You falsely accused Jo of doing so which makes you a hypocrite. You, on the other hand, assume influence but offer no empirical proof. You use that which is unproven to prove your case, Circulus in demonstrando.

“Scientists have much to learn about the way aerosols affect regional and global climate. We have yet to accurately quantify the relative impacts on climate of natural aerosols and those of human origin. Moreover, we do not know in what regions of the planet the amount of atmospheric aerosol is increasing, is diminishing, and is remaining roughly constant. Overall, we do not even know whether aerosols are warming or cooling our planet.”

And also:

“Aerosol particles larger than about 1 micrometer in size are produced by windblown dust and sea salt from sea spray and bursting bubbles. Aerosols smaller than 1 micrometer are mostly formed by condensation processes such as conversion of sulfur dioxide (SO2) gas (released from volcanic eruptions) to sulfate particles and by formation of soot and smoke during burning processes. After formation, the aerosols are mixed and transported by atmospheric motions and are primarily removed by cloud and precipitation processes.”

The rest of your post was non sequitur because it is base on a false premise. Your circular reasoning is based on assuming that aerosols cause cooling because it hasn’t been proven false, Argumentum ad ignorantiam!

Personally, when dealing with the world, with facts as we know it, I try to assume the most likely situations, ones supported by the evidence, rather than unlikely values that match my preferences. I consider that realism.

Personally, when dealing worth the world, with facts as we know them, I assume nothing but reason logically and utilize deductive reasoning. You aught to give it a try, KR!

Lets start with Quaas et al 2008. You have committed a lie by omission. Allow me to illustrate. Here is the full quote to put things improper context:

Combining these relationships with a data set of satellite-derived anthropogenic aerosol fraction, we estimate an anthropogenic radiative forcing of −0.9 ± 0.4 Wm−2 for the aerosol direct effect and of −0.2 ± 0.1 Wm−2 for the cloud albedo effect. Because of uncertainties in both satellite data and the method, the uncertainty of this result is likely larger than the values given here which correspond only to the quantifiable error estimates. The results nevertheless indicate that current global climate models may overestimate the cloud albedo effect.

I put the section you left out in bold. Obviously, the amount measured is so small it fits within the error bars! If the authors of the paper are correct and current global climate models overestimate the cloud albedo effect, then there will be more warming because less of the sunlight is being reflected back into space. In other words, you contradicted yourself.

You are welcomed to disagree but I am going to go with zero because the numbers you mentioned fit within the error bars. Do you ever tire of embarrassing yourself?

The AR4 did not report uncertainties for methane or CO and gave no mean estimate for NOx. The range for the GWP of CO is from the third IPCC assessment and encompasses values reported up through the AR4. Our calculations for the shorter 20-year GWP, including aerosol responses, yield values of 79 and 105 for methane, 11 and 19 for CO, and –335 and –560 for NOx, including direct and direct+indirect radiative effects of aerosols in each case. The 100-yr GWPs for SO2 (per Tg SO2) and ammonia would be –22 and –19, respectively, including direct aerosol radiative effects only, and –76 and –15 adding indirect aerosol radiative effects. GWPs for very short-lived NOx, SO2, and ammonia will vary widely by emission location and timing, and hence global values are of limited use.

The paper discussed GWP, global warming potential.

The 100-year time horizon conventionally chosen strongly reduces the influence of species that are short-lived relative to CO2. Additionally, GWPs assume that integrated global mean RF is a useful indicator of climate change. Although this is generally reasonable at the global scale, GWP does not take into account the rate of change, and it neglects that the surface temperature response to regionally distributed forcings depends on the location of the RF (26) and that precipitation and circulation responses may be even more sensitive to RF location (27). Along with their dependence on emission timing and location, this makes GWPs particularly ill-suited to very short-lived species such as NOx, SO2, or ammonia, although they are more reasonable for longer-lived CO Inclusion of short-lived species in agreements alongside long-lived greenhouse gases is thus problematic (28, 29). Hence, emissions of short- lived species have traditionally been, and will likely continue to be, primarily regulated by local- to regional-scale policies targeting air quality. Should policies aim to mitigate climate change by separately targeting short-lived species emissions, however, they should consider effects across gas-phase and aerosol species. Furthermore, assessment of policies affecting particular sectors that emit both long- and short-lived species should include the overall impact rather than simply the impact of long-lived gases.

If you would had read the paper you would have known that it dealt primarily with CO2 and other gasses that supposedly had Global warming “potential”. The paper made it clear that aerosols were of such minor importance that “this makes GWPs particularly ill-suited to very short-lived species such as NOx, SO2, or ammonia.”

Finally, our results demonstrate that improving our knowledge of aerosol-climate interactions is important not only for better understanding the aerosol contribution to past and future climate change, but even for correctly evaluating the effects of long-lived greenhouse gas emissions from methane-oxidant-aerosol interactions.

The paper, filled with caveats, disclaimers and the usual weasel words ended with the usual we need to do more research. In other words, they want to waste more taxpayer money on playstation model BS!

Penner et al 2010

Satellite-based estimates of the aerosol indirect effect (AIE) are consistently smaller than the estimates from global aerosol models, and, partly as a result of these differences, the assessment of this climate forcing includes large uncertainties.

Unfortunately, pure model estimates of indirect forcing are also suspect, because they are not able to reproduce the PD slopes between Nc and AOD in different regions (12). In addition, because other models get different values for these slopes, their estimates of forcing using the methods described here might differ. We can hope that improvements in both satellite data and models may eventually bring these differing results closer together and thus help to improve both model-based and satellite-based estimates.

The only thing the papers you cited agreed about was uncertainty. You say you are going to stick to the numbers than do it! The papers you cited substantiate my earlier claim. Your papers agree with NASA, there is way to much uncertainty to start assigning any influence by aerosols on climate.

You may want to read the papers thoroughly new time you decide to comment!

Eddy Aruda – The constant in all of the aerosol data I am aware of, the piece you seem to be ignoring, is that the mean estimate is strongly negative.

That matches basic theory – aerosols reflect light (increase albedo), provide nucleation for clouds (as per the CERN/CLOUD claims folks make), and generally should reduce insolation. For this not to be true would require major errors in the science.

But you appear to feel that because of uncertainties in the effects you can ignore them entirely. I’m just going to have to disagree – I’m going to consider the best estimate to be the most likely indication of the data. Your selection of zero is well off center - and I consider your decision to go with that to be off center too.

I think KR is guilty once again of using sources which utilise models as evidence to the veracity of other models, which are ultimately derived from the same sources. Talk about circular logic! You can’t defeat them totally because the validity of the modelled data is confirmed by further modelled data, all predicated on the assumption that the models are in any way correct in the first place.

Wheels within wheels, assumptions within assumptions…….like those Russian Nesting Matryoshka dolls or a Chinese box, situated one within the other.

The constant in all of the aerosol data I am aware of, the piece you seem to be ignoring, is that the mean estimate is strongly negative.

The constant in all this is has been your inability to cite any proof to support your bogus claim. NASA says you are full of SH!t! From the link I provided above, “Overall, we do not even know whether aerosols are warming or cooling our planet.” So, NASA does not know but you do? Wow! You then cite papers, where you lie by omission. The papers you cite offer no proof that aerosols are warming or cooling the planet or are based on models. You cited no evidence for me to ignore.

Nobody denies that aerosols create clouds. What I deny is any validity for global circulation models. In fact, the problem with global circulation models is that they do not properly factor the effect of clouds into their simulations. That is one of the reasons why the models failed to project the lack of warming which has occurred since 1997. According to the models, it was supposed to be a lot warmer by now. The models were wrong and that is what you hang your hat on?

But you appear to feel that because of uncertainties in the effects you can ignore them entirely.

Once again, you are absolutely wrong. Since we do not know what effects aerosols will have I’m not going to assume anything. You, on the other hand, “appear” to suffer from confirmation bias. We do not know with certainty what all the forcing are that affect climate. That is the problem with models, they use an equation absent some of the variables and then wonder why they cannot get it right.

You say you’re going to have to disagree and that you consider the “best estimate” indication of the data to be the most likely? That is because you are presumptuous. That is not how the scientific method works. So, you’re going to agree to disagree? I could care less! Anybody with a brain stem that reads this thread is going to see you for the brain-dead zombie useful idiot that you are. Your whole argument has been based on argumentum ad ignorantiam. When you can cite one shred of empirical evidence you may have a leg to stand on. Instead, you have lied, practiced deceit, tried to pass off models as empirical data and cited papers which, upon closer examination, contradict your position. Your reasoning is circular and you are, in essence, begging the question (tautology).

For this not to be true would require major errors in the science.

Hey, you are close to a major breakthrough. Every new scientific theory is founded upon the shattered remains of an old one. The gospel of global warming is being preached by some who use to preach that we were going into an ice age. Science is often proven wrong. it takes a little humility to admit being wrong. Perhaps you should practice a little humility? You could then cut down on the amount of crow you constantly eat!

Your selection of zero is well off center – and I consider your decision to go with that to be off center too.

You have employed another straw man argument. I never assigned a value of 0 to anything. You, have assigned value arbitrarily. The “scientist” do not even know if the effects of aerosols are negative or positive but you claim to? Why don’t you try to cite some empirical evidence? So far, you have been unable to. In fact, the papers you cited make my case for me. Thank you for your help. I do not care about what you think about any “decision” I make.

I would have to disagree – the evidence (which you have dismissed, in an Argument from Uncertainty fallacy) indicates a most likely value of strongly negative aerosol effects, both direct and indirect. Your dismissal of all the evidence is an assumption of no effect.

Pósfai et al 2010 is a reasonable review, but even a simple Google Scholar search on aerosol observations will provide multiple ground-based, sampling, and satellite observations supporting a negative forcing.

This tracks with cause/effect relationships such as insolation in Asia inversely correlated with pollution, changes from the aerosol releases of the 9/11 event in the US, cooling after volcanic activity, and other observations of how aerosols provide a negative forcing. And with lab work observing particle behavior, light scattering, nucleation of water vapor, residence times, etc.

You claim that because of the uncertainties in the evidence we must assume nothing - even though the (not tightly constrained) assortment of data we have indicates a most likely negative forcing. That makes as much sense as assuming, based on uncertainty, that the next roll of a pair of dice will most likely be snake-eyes.

You’re still betting on snake-eyes.

—

[And yes, I am well aware of the differences between the spread of inductive evidence and random probabilistic events - and I will just laugh at those who complain about the analogy. But in both cases there is a distribution - and assuming that you know nothing, or that the most likely outcome is the one at the tail end of that distribution - that is foolish.]

I would have to disagree – the evidence (which you have dismissed, in an Argument from Uncertainty fallacy) indicates a most likely value of strongly negative aerosol effects, both direct and indirect. Your dismissal of all the evidence is an assumption of no effect.

I have not dismissed anything. It is you that has failed to provide any evidence that could pass scrutiny or even a cursory review. You have failed to respond to any of my rebuttals. The best you can do was to claim that there is “evidence” and then failed to provide any!

Did you read the link that you provided for the fallacy, “argument from uncertainty”?

“Quite frequently I encounter people who equate lack of certitude with giant inferential leaps. Science deals with probabilities, often quite high probabilities, but not certitudes. It is one of the strengths of the scientific method as it acknowledges a chance of error(while maintaining rigorous standards to establish provisional acceptance of propositions).”

The author you linked to makes it quite clear that there needs to be “rigorous standards to establish provisional acceptance”. You have provided no empirical data. I have thoroughly exposed you as a liar and a disingenuous commenter.The next time your link to something you should read it. You can bet I will!

From Posfai, et al

Aerosol particles in the atmosphere exert a strong influence on climate by interacting with sunlight and by initiating cloud formation.

So far, so good. The effects of aerosols on clouds is well documented. However, the models are unable to accurately simulate the effects of clouds on the climate. If they were, the models would have been validated. instead, they have been wrong!

The claim I made about zero effect was not mine. Rather, it was based on the fact that the paper you cited stated that the amount of measured effect was within the error bars. In essence, unmeasurable or ZERO!

Here are more quotes from the paper:

Although knowledge about gases, including greenhouse gases (GHG), is well advanced, aerosol particles are far less understood.

The IPCC report estimates that the RF attributable to human-induced changes in the aerosol burden is between 0 and –3 W m−2.

Uncertainties in knowledge about the aerosol RF mean that estimates of climate sensitivity to human perturbations are highly uncertain.

We review recent results of individual-particle studies and identify key areas in which microscope techniques will likely produce important results that will lead to a better understanding of aerosol climate effects in the future.

Ideally, we would like to know all the details of the physical and chemical properties of aerosol particles. The main advantage of using microscope methods is that they can provide simultaneous information on several particle properties, but each technique has its special uses and disadvantages.

AFM complements other types of analyses (Barkay et al. 2005, Gwaze et al. 2007), but the lack of direct compositional information and the artifacts arising from the interactions between the cantilever tip and specimen have limited AFM use in atmospheric science.

Further ET studies on fresh and aged soot particles as well as those with and without coatings will provide the models with input parameters that are superior to the input parameters currently in use.

Because the shapes of mineral particles can also depend on their sources and weathering, it will remain difficult to properly account for shape-dependent optical properties of dust particles.

Although the refractive indices of inorganic salts and minerals are well known and given in textbooks, obtaining the refractive indices of the highly variable atmospheric carbonaceous particles remains a major challenge.

The results illustrate how much uncertainty remains in the assessment of the radiative effects of soot, especially in relation to its mixing properties

However, the hygroscopic growth of complex mixtures of inorganic and organic matter in ambient particles is difficult to predict from the properties of their individual constituents.

And so it goes. the paper concludes,

The goal is that this new knowledge will inform modeling studies and lead to a significantly improved understanding of aerosol climate effects.

Obviously, they believe that the models need “improving”!

You claim that because of the uncertainties in the evidence we must assume nothing

Absolutely correct! Never assume anything. You do not find the truth by assuming but you do by questioning. If we assumed the world was flat as they once did, where would we be now!

That makes as much sense as assuming, based on uncertainty, that the next roll of a pair of dice will most likely be snake-eyes.

You’re still betting on snake-eyes.

Another straw man and a bad analogy! I assume nothing. Here is a better analogy. If you flip a quarter in the air and it lands heads up each time ten times in a row, the chances of it landing heads up on the next toss are 50/50.

The range of uncertainties in aerosol forcings runs (as per that last paper) from 0 to -3 W/m^2, with a mode of -1 W/m^2.

That means a claim of -3 W/m^2 has just as much evidentiary support as the 0 W/m^2 you seem to claim based upon your Argument from Uncertainty, your call to toss all the evidence out as unworthy.

A claim that the most conservative (WRT the evidence) expectation was -3 W/m^2 would be unsupportable – I can only imagine the outrage on this blog if I were to claim that. As is your 0 W/m^2, all that’s left after abandoning the data. The most likely value, given the evidence we have, is ~-1 W/m^2.

But you are still claiming snake-eyes, 0 W/m^2, the tail of the distribution, as the most conservative choice – that’s simply not supportable. Data with large uncertainty ranges is not equivalent to no data at all. If that was the case, if you were correct, given the lack of absolute proof that the sky would not fall – it would never be safe to leave the house.

—

All of this is but a side topic to the opening post, where:

The warming trend expected from CO2 without any feedbacks at all is 0.07 ºC/decade. The trends from the UAH satellites are 0.06±0.01ºC/decade. Since the two figures are almost the same, no one needs a super-computer to tell them that this implies that the sum of all feedbacks (and the sum of all fears) is zip, nada, nothing.

is quite clearly a single attribution strawman - solar, volcanic, ENSO influences, black carbon, land use, ice albedo, anthropogenic aerosols, and CO2 are all factors (not an exhaustive list, incidentally), and claiming that because the warming trend does not match the forcings and feedbacks of CO2 alone , that CO2 is not a positive forcing – that is a fallacious argument.

At this point, Eddy, we’ve cycled through the discussion on this aerosol subtopic a few times, you’ve descended into ad hominems and insults (“Liar???” Seriously?), and I cannot see any worth in discussing this further with you.

Your argument from uncertainty has already been rebutted by the very link you provided on the “informal” fallacy. The last paper you cited was full of uncertainties and nowhere stated a confidence level of 95% or better. The whole point of the paper was that “Although knowledge about gases, including greenhouse gases (GHG), is well advanced, aerosol particles are far less understood.”

I never said that aerosols have no effect on climate. You are a liar. Here is what I wrote,

“There is no justification in assuming anything. Assuming is faith, as in religion whereas emperical data is evidence, as in science. If someone can show empirical evidence that aerosols cause cooling it should be considered . Until then, it is conjecture, not science and certainly not a minor factor, let alone a major one.”

Your response? A straw man!

Eddy Aruda – An assumption of no influence for a particular factor is a choice, much as deciding not to act in a particular situation is a choice in personal situations.

Do aerosols have an effect on climate? Yes. Do we have any definitive empirical proof as to what that influence is? No. Do we know what man’s small contribution to the aerosol content of the atmosphere is? No. One more time. The value of zero I mentioned was in response to the value given by the paper you cited. Again, the amount of measured aerosol was so small and negligible as to fit within the error bars. That makes it statistically useless.

Can computers accurately model climate? No, they do not know what the influence of aerosols is on climate or whether it is positive or negative. The papers you provided disagreed with each other on the amount of aerosol forcings.

Man’s contribution to the aerosol content of the atmosphere is so trivial and insignificant as to have an unmeasurable effect on the climate. Aerosols are having no more effect on the climate now than they have during any time during the current interglacial. Therefore, CO2 should be causing temperatures to rise. There should also be a positive feedback effect caused by water vapor. It hasn’t happened. Your hokey hypothesis has been thoroughly falsified and has more holes in it than a block of Swiss cheese.

You don’t have to worry about abandoning the data. In order to abandon the data you would have to have provided empirical data to support your contentions. Instead, you have provided papers that contradict what you say. I provided from the papers you cited evidence that supports my case.

Regarding your comment about a “single attribution strawman” you are the one who has committed a straw man argument. Jo never said that there are not other feedbacks, she simply said that all of these feedbacks have had no effect. The same feedbacks that are in affect right now, with the exception of CO2, are the same as they were prior to the Industrial Revolution. If CO2 was the powerful forcing that the IPCC alleges it to be, we would’ve seen the temperature rise as the models predicted. Of course, that didn’t happen. Again, your precious hypothesis has been falsified. If aerosols were able to dampen the effects of CO2 on climate there would have been no medieval warm period. Why? Because the aerosol forcing’s were the same back then as they are now. Also, there would’ve been no recent warming because aerosols would’ve prevented it. The only thing that has changed is the level of CO2 in the atmosphere.

Either the IPCC factored in the affects of aerosols on climate correctly or they didn’t. If they would have entered the correct amount of aerosol forcing, along with all of the other forcings, the models would’ve been validated. Perhaps they followed your line of reasoning and made a bunch of assumptions that just didn’t pan out?

I can dance with you all day long KR. In fact, the more you comment the more you help me to make my case.

At this point, KR, we’ve cycled through the discussion on this aerosol sub topic a few times. You have failed to cite any empirical evidence to make your case. The papers you cited have been fully rebutted. You have employed several fallacies all of which you have been called out on. Yes, I called you a liar because you are one. You committed a lie by omission. You were unable to reply with even a feeble response to any of my rebuttals.

Congratulations, you have just had your intellectual ass handed to you!

I would love to take you to the County fair. As good as you are grasping for straws I’m sure you could find the needle in the haystack and win the big prize. You prattle on about negative forcings, variations in cycles and climate inertia, whatever the hell that is.

There is no such thing as climate inertia. The climate is a chaotic, nonlinear system and is constantly changing. Are you trying to tell us that the modelers did not “factor in” all of the above? Maybe that is why the modelers never get it right? Garbage in, garbage out!

Your statement is an illogical red herring. As usual, you demonstrate revisionist climate history. Jim Hansen stated in 1988 that if CO2 emissions continued under his “business as usual” scenario temperatures would rise out of the statistical noise in the 1990s.

It did not happen.

Since 1997 there has been no global warming. The small amount claimed by the proponents of the failed hypothesis is well within the error bars.

KR it seems a reasonable proposition that your doubling of CO2 will cause a 3 to 4 degree rise in temperature. That is until you look at what the AGW crowd tell us what the PPM of CO2 were around 200 years ago compared to now. It would seem that both them and you have shot yourselves in the foot. It has virtually doubled, I want my promised 3 or 4 degrees it is bloody cold.

The consensus science of a few different fields including AGW are all turning out to be a load, a very expensive load of crock.

The climate of our little blue planet is controlled by outside influences, some what beyond the control of politicians. Consensus scientists in AGW ignore outside influences so what they are doing is playing with weather. They have failed to predict climate and are usually 100% wrong with the weather.

Our climate is totally controlled by external forces and what we get on Earth is weather. The chaos in the system chases its tail to try and reach equalibrium, that is weather. Easily proved, take away the sun and the planets and we loose our oceans our magnet and our atmosphere and we are a big dead rock in the void.

Logic tends to play a big part in those that are sceptical, belief in unicorns is per se not a bad thing, but belief in magical science and the extraordinarily infinite powers of CO2 is heading into the pixie dust and fairy territory.

until you look at what the AGW crowd tell us what the PPM of CO2 were around 200 years ago compared to now. It would seem that both them and you have shot yourselves in the foot. It has virtually doubled, I want my promised 3 or 4 degrees it is bloody cold.

280 to 395ppm? With an expected CO2 only forcing of ~3.7 W/m^2 per doubling (logarithmic relationship), that’s about a 1.65 W/m^2 CO2 forcing so far. If you look at the sum of all forcing changes since the Industrial Revolution (add in methane, halocarbons, aerosol effects, black carbon, solar changes, etc., with, mind you, some uncertainties), and it’s still around 1.6 W/m^2.

That’s about 1/3 of a “2x CO2″ forcing. We’re about 0.7C warmer than would be expected from non-anthropogenic forcings, and ocean heat content hasn’t caught up with the forcing at this point (as per increasing OHC measures), so we’re right about on track for a 3C/doubling sensitivity.

If you’re not warm enough – wait awhile. We have plenty of coal, lots of natural gas; even if we start to run out of oil we have more than enough carbon to burn to make things much hotter…

Hansen and Schmidt still say that Hansen’s 1988 predictions of temp rise hold true. They cite GISTemp, of course, while skeptics tend to cite HadCruTemp or satellite. So we have diametrically opposed positions with the same data. Each depends on start-dates.

Not warmed for 10 years or so? The non-warming since 2004 can be considered part of the “natural” variation that the warmists recognize. The trend from the rise since ’79 splits the last 15 years of equivocal data if you give the devil some wiggle room. The last 10 or more years of non-cumulative warming are a concern for the CO2 crowd, but not terminal for their narrative; a few more years are needed for that.

How many are needed? Someone – Trenberth, perhaps, or Jones – suggested 15 years in toto are required for a trend, putting the date of review to about 2020. I think I have seen as much as 30 (!), or 2035, which is a good number if you wish to be headed into retirement or the obit pages as an Elder of the Earth before your theories can be falsified. Me, I go for less, for the 2015 time-frame, largely because the skeptic counter-narrative has temperatures going down in the years of quiet sun. A steady temperature is a concern, but an actual drop of 0.2C or more is a serious problem: as the feedback mechanism is the key to CAGW, each rise in CO2 has 3X the value for global temperatures, so going against the rise requires a counter force of 4X or more, far outside the IPCC/Gore/Hansen theory of temperatures.

Also: global temperatures cannot drop while the Arctic sea ice extent drops, principally because global temperatues are sensitive to north polar winter temperatures, which itself controls the development of winter ice. This year the Arctic melt is starting later than the past few years. If summer winds are moderate, then the summer ice extent will be higher than in prior years. It could be the start of a reversal. Ironically enough, a huge portion of the Antarctic ice shelf has just broken off, so the warmists could easily dodge the Arctic bullet by pointing to a “collapse” of Antarctica. So two of the three signature events of global warming (temperatures, polar sea-ice extent and global sea-levels)should go negative if the solar causitive theories are correct. Again, the first polling stations will be reporting by 2015.

The game goes on. But not for long. If the global temps don’t drop, much solar cycle theory is in trouble, and if they do, Gore and Suzuki are in trouble. Rich and known for their passion for the planet, perhaps, but in trouble for their alarmist screed.

“…..a huge portion of the Antarctic ice shelf has just broken off? ?????????

I can only think you are referring to the Larsen B ice shelf on the eastern side of the Antarctic Peninsula. While that ice shelf has shrunk by about 85% since 1995, it represents a minuscule portion of total Antarctic Ice. It is also in an area which has warmed significantly over the last 50 years which most scientist agree is a result of a change in ocean currents volcanic warming. Nothing to do with ‘global warming’ and as other parts of Antarctica have stable or increasing ice levels, the warmists are getting no real comfort from Antarctica.

Climate alarmists including the CSIRO, David Karoly and Tim Flannery and Co. were happy to point to short term trends such as the drought as ‘proof’ of climate change through global warming in Australia, but now they are insisting that only 17 years or 30 years is long enough to prove a trend.

No matter how shrill the alarmists get, the fact is, there is absolutely no scientific evidence of an overwhelmingly positive feedback from increasing CO2, nor that temperatures could possibly reach a catastrophic ‘tipping point’ through human CO2 emissions.

Doug,
a “huge portion” of the Ross ice shelf melted in the latter half of the 50′s. No scientist noticed for 20 years, until one mapped the daily position reports of whalers, and realised they had been able to get much closer to the Pole. Estimate was 26% of the Ross shelf. If you check out the relative size v the Larsen B shelf, you will see what little value I place on “the ice is melting…it’s AGW…we’re all doomed” school of alarm.

Although KR will probably see it as an early example of dangerous warming, leading to global cooling in the 60′s and 70′s. KR should ask how can CO2 caused warming lead to cooling, without negative feedback, contrary to all the assumptions made by the East Anglia mob.

I actually don’t place much direct importance on the various ice shelves breaking off chunks. As you note, that happens from time to time – the ice becomes unstable and a bigger chunk falls off. Long term average ice shelf extent might be a reasonable measure, but not the irregularly-spaced break-offs.

What is of more importance is the mass balance – the difference between accumulation and melt in Antarctica, Greenland, glaciers, etc. The last 20 years of data, both gravimetric and radar altimetry, indicate that as of 2006 Greenland and Antarctica are losing mass at ~475GT/yr (1.3mm of sea level rise from melt alone), with an acceleration of 36GT/yr each year of the 20 year study.

WRT the 1960′s, you’re falling into the same trap as the opening post – blaming all changes on CO2 alone. That’s a strawman argument; you have to look at solar and aerosol forcings, and GHG’s, as well as variations such as ENSO – and then see how total forcings correlate to temperature. Claiming CO2 has no effect, while ignoring the myriad other influences, is a bad argument.

I’m a little confused on your numbers. A 36GT/Yr acceleration over 20 years would yield a net loss rate of 720GT/Yr after 20 years, yet you only mention a current 476GT/Yr loss rate in 2006. So, did Greenland and Antarctica gain a lot of mass in the first 6-7 years of the 20 year study period while they were losing mass? (Ow! That makes my head hurt!)

Your massive acceleration in ice loss in 20 years is, according to you, leading to 1.3mm of annual sea level rise, and accelerating. But the Jason/Topex/Posidon records show a fairly steady rise of sea level of about 3.1mm/year over the last 19 years. And we see a deceleration in that rise over the last couple years. Where’s the acceleration in melt rate?

Last, GRACE has admitted that over the last year or so they mis-calibrated/mis-calculated the Greenland/West Antarctic Ice Sheet melt rates by a factor of about two due to isostatic uplift, and in the wrong direction for the global warmers. (Ouch! That’s gotta hurt!)

As to GRACE corrections, Wu et al (2010) is certainly very interesting, but please keep in mind that it is a new technique (estimating both GIA and mass balance changes in one pass), disagrees with most estimates (as in the radar altimetry forming part of the data I linked), and is still undergoing validation.

—

Back on point: CO2 isn’t the only forcing in effect; ignoring other influences (as the opening post does) is a strawman argument. And using observed fingerprints of increasing greenhouse effect to argue against the greenhouse effect (as was done above) is ridiculous.

What is of more importance is the mass balance – the difference between accumulation and melt in Antarctica, Greenland, glaciers, etc. The last 20 years of data, both gravimetric and radar altimetry, indicate that as of 2006 Greenland and Antarctica are losing mass at ~475GT/yr (1.3mm of sea level rise from melt alone), with an acceleration of 36GT/yr each year of the 20 year study.

WRT the 1960′s, you’re falling into the same trap as the opening post – blaming all changes on CO2 alone. That’s a strawman argument; you have to look at solar and aerosol forcings, and GHG’s, as well as variations such as ENSO – and then see how total forcings correlate to temperature. Claiming CO2 has no effect, while ignoring the myriad other influences, is a bad argument.

Almost all of Antarctica never gets above freezing. The exception would be a few ice shelves and peninsulas near the Antarctic Circle. If it were to get a little warmer it would snow even more and the ice mass would increase further.

Here’s a newsflash for you: if the ice was melting faster in Greenland, Antarctica or anywhere else there would be an increase in the rate at which sea levels rise. Sea levels have been rising since the end of the last Ice Age. And they have been rising at a consistent rate. There is no evidence whatsoever that there has been any kind of an increase in sea level rise. In fact, recent data shows no rise to a slight decrease in sea levels. If the “missing heat” was hiding in the oceans then the thermal expansion would cause sea levels to rise. It hasn’t.

You have falsely accused Jo of using a straw man argument. Joe never said that CO2 is the only forcing at work on climate. In fact, on several posts she has stated that the IPCC often fails to give proper consideration to other climate forcings. Although the IPCC admits that there are other forcings, they have posited a positive feedback that has never been shown to exist. The IPCC forecasted temperature increases which have not occurred. You can make all the feeble excuses you want to for those who promulgate the greatest scientific fraud ever perpetrated upon the human race but it won’t change the facts. They said the temperatures were going to rise and they haven’t. The hypothesis has been falsified.

Do you have any sources for this? I figured they’d be prominent, however I have seen naught; in fact they seem to avoid those predictions at all possible cost, which is no wonder since even GIStemp is below scenario C (which is a projection based on significant reductions in CO2 emissions)

Record high global temperature during the period with instrumental data was reached in 2010.

Above is a direct quote from the abstract of Hansen’s article. “Ever” was a poor choice of words on my part. The HADCRUT data didn’t show any warming in the last 10-12 years the last time I looked. The GISS data will always show a warming as long as James “data manipulator” Hansen is around.

Well I don’t know about ever – ever is a very long time; but we have been coming out of an ice age for the last 300 years, so it would therefor be pretty surprising if it had not been the warmest decade in at least the last 300 years.

The lack of positive feed back is what they should be investigating. The “why” would be very useful and scientific. And I fear the reason any research on it will never see the light of day in a Peer reviewed Journal as long as the East Anglia cabal remains intact.

It sticks out like canine gonads, folks: The reason the IPCC exists is to blame the human race for the climate. If the human race can’t be blamed, the IPCC has to be disbanded and climatology is relegated to the back of the research funding queue because it can no longer generate taxes to pay for the gravy train, the conferences, the frequent flyer status credits and the self-congratulatory awards system. As the backers of the CO2 hypothesis become more irrational and friendless, I expect that a determined effort will be made in the next year to discredit the UAH satellite log, which Douglass and Christy point out is the only reliable, incorruptible high-technology record of global atmospheric temperature since 1979.
The fatal flaw and the telltale junk science alert attached to the CAGW hypothesis is that it has the backing of a global political movement dedicated to dismantling the Western economic system; climate scientists have become indistinguishable from the extreme left of politics and have willingly destroyed their credibility by basking in their status as radical activists. That inspires zero confidence in their professionalism and ethics. The well-founded popular suspicion is most entered the field as environmentalist zealots and regard scientific adherence to truth and evidence as an expendable concept.

Science shows the way. It also allows ironies to develop, at variance with the grander aspirations of the collective Ministry-of-We-Know Best.

In New Zealand, where carbon taxation is instituted and set to become a progressively greater taxation burden, Transpower (an electricity generating company) have identified a stockpiling strategy to acquire grand quantities of sulphur hexafluoride (SF6) with technical application in high voltage ops. The problem is that as the IPCC have identified SF6 as ‘the most potent greenhouse gas that it has evaluated, with a global warming potential of 22,200 times that of CO2 over a 100 year period’ (Wikipedia 2012).

The purpose of the power company strategy is to save millions of dollars in greenhouse gas taxation due to be implemented in 2013.

And the response of the NZ Greens: “Green Party climate change spokesperson Kennedy Graham says Transpower’s behaviour nullifies the whole purpose of the ETS.”

An ‘unintended consequence’ of ill-considered policies based on politically correct funding of climate science? Oh darn, they won’t raise the money they wanted to from the ETS.

Manfred NZ is even more barking mad than OZ. We produce perhaps 2% of global co2 emissions while NZ emits about 0.1%.

China, India and the non OECD now emit 1 billion more ( yes MORE TONNES) tonnes of co2 every year while the OECD are virtually flatlining. NZ and OZ are sacrificing our industries and jobs for a zero return and zero change to the temp and climate.

Of course this zero return and zero change is costing billions $ every year.

Meanwhile Juliar is trying to sell as much coal overseas to anyone who wants to buy it. Proves she and her idiot govt couldn’t care less about the increase in co2 emissions.

Our govt only cares when Aussies try to burn coal, then it is BAD, but exports are GOOD.

Indeed Neville, it is hard to sleep at night knowing that there is such unfettered stupidity at work, squandering millions, pointlessly when it might be used in so many genuine, utterly helpful ways. A suggestion to the Minister-of-those-things-that-cannot-be-controlled-but-may-be-regulated, that carbon tax funds be re-named and directed to the rebuild of Christchurch, was met with a predictable deafening silence.

10 April: Age: Ben Cubby: Geo-engineering ‘a risk’ in climate change battle
ATTEMPTS to slow down climate change by large-scale geo-engineering present ”serious risks” and are unlikely to replace the need to cut greenhouse gas emissions, Australia’s chief scientist has warned.
In an overview of schemes proposed by scientists, researchers at the Office of the Chief Scientist say the main methods of planetary-scale engineering would confront big problems with technical feasibility, political co-operation and cost. But research should be pursued in the hope of developing last-ditch methods to slow climate change…
The findings of the Australian report are similar to those of recent studies undertaken by Britain’s Royal Society and the US Task Force on Climate Remediation Research.http://www.theage.com.au/environment/climate-change/geoengineering-a-risk-in-climate-change-battle-20120409-1wl7a.html

The publications at Principia Scientific International show why carbon dioxide has absolutely no effect on climate, so sensitivity is zero. See, for example, my peer-reviewed paper Radiated Energy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics on the site.

I am proud to be an active member of PSI and, as such, I am in daily email contact with many of these main stream scientists, including professors and PhD’s in various disciplines such as physics, applied mathematics, chemistry, climatology and astro physics. The numbers are approaching 40, including well known new members just announced.

What I write are not just my theories. We are all in agreement that standard physics and empirical results back us up.

The last 110 years show climate feedbacks are zero and all climate change is related to natural cycles such as the ~1000 year cycle (due for a maximum within 50 to 200 years) and the superimposed 60 year cycle which caused all the concern in the 30 years up to 1998 inclusive. See the plot and explanation at the foot of my Home page.

Consider the warming from 1979 to 2007, when we measured temperatures using satellites…..The warming trend expected from CO2 without any feedbacks at all is 0.07 ºC/decade. The trends from the UAH satellites are 0.06±0.01ºC/decade. Since the two figures are almost the same, no one needs a super-computer to tell them that this implies that the sum of all feedbacks (and the sum of all fears) is zip, nada, nothing.

Time series (uah) from 1978.92 to 2012.17
Selected data up to 2007
Least squares trend line; slope = 0.0142303 per year
1978.92 -0.232966
2007 0.166668

Now that’s ~ 0.14DC /decade, which is over twice the trend indicated above.
So it would seem that you’re basing your analysis on a false assumption?

Also there’s your point on ENSO being in tune with tropical temps, but empirically that does not hold for global temps, with 2011 being an historically strong La Nina year. A La Nina year that shows no sign of global cooling in line with Bob Carter’s ENSO hypothesis.

So how do you reconcile your low sensitivity argument in light of facts to the contrary?

2011 is also one of the coldest in the last 15 years and continues the trend of no global warming for more than half of my lifetime. Expecting that the claim “11th hottest year on record” will be convincing is naive. And of course “on record” means in the past 150 years.
We all know that the MWP was hotter and we did just fine getting through that.

Some other things to consider.

My energy bills and water bills have doubled in the past 5 years and I have a prime minister who lied to bring in a carbon tax despite widespread and continued public condemnation.

No, we will have to wait for that little bonus to follow in the next 1-2 years no doubt.

But certainly the advent of, and profiteering from, renewable energy subsidies (eg. rooftop solar) and infrastructure to incorporate inefficient and expensive alternative sources of energy (wind and solar principally) certainly have contributed the lion’s share to sharp rises in prices, as you well know. So, I hardly think you have any credentials to fall back upon in making energy more affordable over there in Green Cloud Cuckoo Land.

It is the whole suite of stupidity which you seem aligned to that is responsible, or are you suggesting that the idea of desalination plants because it would never rain again was the result of skeptics’ advocacy? If so I must have missed it.

Similarly, only those such as your good self advocate the idea that wind and solar are such grand ideas at 40c plus a kWh, as opposed to coal at 3-6c a kWh. Once again I don’t think it is “us” that are advocating this economic master stroke. Would you like to take credit where it is due, Cat old boy? C’mon now, don’t be shy!

What you think your electricity has gone up from coal price increases
and delivery increases.
Catamon think again its because of the 60c or 40c or 20c feed in Tarrif
given to the people as feed in tarriffs , Who do you think pays for that Catamon , Just in case you don`t know we the people do !
Thats why your electricity has gone up ,Thats a Carbon tax .
The worst is yet to come.

Catamon….. No, You are deliberately being obtuse in relation to Sonny’s post.

I’m sure Sonny is aware that the Carbon tax is not yet implemented and that the rise in electricity price Sonny is talking about, is a direct consequence of the ruinous subsidies to make “renewable energy” viable which drives up the cost for Power companies using cheap Coal and Gas, who then passes the extra costs on to the consumer.

There is no denying that it will get worse once the Carbon tax comes in… And don’t start playing with the Labor spin where they essentially are pinching from Peter to pay Paul to pay Peter again, when Gillard and co start talking of “compensation”….. It is a simple fact. Once the Carbon tax comes in the price of living and doing business in Australia is going to go up…..LOTS.

…. and it will not make one single measurable difference to the Temperature of the Globe.

With CPC ENSO records dating back to 1950, 2011 ranked as the warmest “La Niña year” in the 1950–2011 period of record. Two of the three warmest years on record (2010 and 1998) are “El Niño years”. A La Niña (El Niño) year is defined here as occurring when the first three months of a calendar year meet the La Niña (El Niño) criteria as defined by the CPC.

So 2010, a much warmer year than 2011, was an El Nino year because the first 3 months were -ve SOI while every other month of the year was +ve! 2010 had 9 +ve months, only 1 less than +ve 8, and is an El Nino year. What a fudge!

cohenite – If you don’t like the definitions, convince everyone else of your “better” ones.

As it stands, though, your claim of 2010 as a La Nina year does not match the definition, and my statement therefore stands… 2011 was the warmest La Nina year since 1880, the 11th warmest year in the record.

“Global temperature in 2011 was lower than in 1998,” NASA climate scientist James Hansen admits in the GISS report. However, he adds that nine of the 10 warmest years on record have occurred in the 21st century, and that 2011 was cooled by a moderately strong La Niña.

Hopefully this is all clear. A strong La Nina makes the world very hot, and a weak La Nina makes the world colder. So why doesn’t he move his office to ice-free Nome, Alaska? After all, his Manhattan office has been underwater for four years already.

Actually, the 1930s were warmer than this decade or the last one. At least until Jim Hansen the astronomer at NASA altered the data. As usual, his alterations show that previous years were cooler and more recent years were warmer. This happens every time he alters the data. Wow, I wonder what the odds of that happening are? Shouldn’t there at least be a “once in a blue moon” occasion where it is just the opposite? There is an explanation for that: fraud!

Mind you, what’s that got to do with the “misquote” of current satellite trends?

A lot. But first the ‘misquote’ is to do with Douglass and Christy’s findings of a ‘pure’, non-feedback AGW/CO2 temperature trend of 0.062±0.010ºK/decade compared with the ‘official’ non-feedback trend of 0.070g ºC/decade.

As you note the UAH trend is currently ~0.14C per decade. The import of this is that this is not only approximately the non-feedback figure which Hansen found but which Foster and Rahmstorf [F&R] have recently confirmed. They partially detrended the temperature data by removing natural variables; they have done this to isolate the AGW effect on temperature. They found a non-feedback or pure AGW/CO2 temperature of between 1.4-1.8C per century by removing all natural variation; that’s 0.14C-0.18C per decade.

So, from this what can we conclude; either D&C are correct and the pure AGW/CO2 signal is correct, in which case the feedbacks are in addition to their 0.06C PD for a ‘pure’ AGW signal. Or F&R are correct and the ‘pure’ signal is 0.14C, which is also the current rate as found by UAH, in which case there are no feedbacks.

As you note the UAH trend is currently ~0.14C per decade. The import of this is that this is not only approximately the non-feedback figure which Hansen found but which Foster and Rahmstorf [F&R] have recently confirmed. They partially detrended the temperature data by removing natural variables; they have done this to isolate the AGW effect on temperature. They found a non-feedback or pure AGW/CO2 temperature of between 1.4-1.8C per century by removing all natural variation; that’s 0.14C-0.18C per decade.

That is an egregious misinterpretation of F&R 2011. They performed a multiple linear regression of temperature (dependent variable) against volcanic aerosols, solar cycles, ENSO, and a linear trend (supported by a linear trending residual if regressing against only aerosol, solar, and ENSO), and reported that trend.

They stated that

that the rate of global warming due to other factors (most likely these are exclusively anthropogenic) has been remarkably steady during the 32 years from 1979 through 2010.

But they made no claims about CO2 versus anthropogenic aerosols versus land use versus feedbacks versus etc. – your post is therefore a complete misrepresentation, and an erroneous claim.

The adjusted data show[s] warming at very similar rates to the unadjusted data, with smaller probable errors, and the warming rate is steady over the whole time interval

In other words; F&R have adjusted the temperature data by removing the natural variables to produce “the global warming signal”; that AGW signal is 0.014-0.018C per year and is constant.

That is unequivocal; F&R have isolated the AGW signal which is unchanging at a time of rapidly increasing CO2 levels!

And F&R admit there is “little difference” between the adjusted and unadjusted data; that is the natural variables are NOT feeding back into the temperature; how plainer can that be!? NO feedbacks! As found by the darling of the alarmists, tamino.

And the rate of increase, which is UNCHANGING [this is worth repeating] found by F&R is also much less than required by the official estimates of the temperature response to CO2 increase at both the Transient and Equilibrium levels.

It is a contradiction all round.

As for methodology; I have looked at this before on another of Jo’s threads at comment 11.1.1.1 here.

…that the rate of global warming due to other factors (most likely these are exclusively anthropogenic) …

(emphasis added)

Hmmm… “other factors”. Not just CO2. Single attribution is a strawman fallacy, which you have engaged in here. And that makes your post a misrepresentation of F&R 2011, ascribing conclusions that they do not make.

F&R 2011 is concerned with separating natural variations (ENSO, solar cycle, volcanic activity) from the temperature record, in order to more clearly look at changes outside those variations. Those changes include everything outside the time-correlated variations, include land use changes, ice cap albedo, GHG changes, pollution aerosols not in the stratosphere, Clausius–Clapeyron water vapor feedbacks, changes in albedo from balding rates, leprechauns, etc.

Those influences look to sum up to a linear change in temperature over the last 30 years, as demonstrated by analysis of the regression residuals (very small, no significant trend left). But that by no means indicates a single influence for that linear trend – and that in fact was not the point of the paper.

Your strawman argument, as per the one in the opening thread, is a logical fallacy. And in your case a misrepresentation of F&R 2011.

Right, global warming is due to humans but not just CO2; moving goal-posts, what?

F&R remove areosols from volcanoes and since the OD index does not distinguish between human made aerosols and natural ones those human aerosols were removed as well. So, what human warming influences do we have left; oh yes, I see, from your list, “balding rates, leprechauns”. That’s the spirit! When your position is complete and utter crap throw in a bit of humour; I like it!

But let’s look more closely at the method F&R have used; they have used multiple regression to remove “El Niño/southern oscillation, volcanic aerosols and solar variability.” And I digress momentarily to wonder at KR’s claim that these 3 independent and exogenous variables can be considered by F&R and KR as not having influence outside the time constraints [from 1979] of the F&R study.

Anyway F&R uses multiple regression to remove the ‘impact’ of the 3 variables but then F&R ADD a LINEAR TREND to their multiple regression! Why and what does this mean? The simple and indeed only answer is that they have done this to make sure AGW is still present as the cause of the temperature increase; but this is a circular argument as ferd berple notes:

By including a linear trend for warming in their analysis as an independent variable, F&R have demonstrated that global warming is well correlated with global warming.

F&R have not solved for GISS. By including Trend(GISS) as an independent variable they have eliminated GISS. What they have shown is that the Trend in GISS can be fully explained as a linear result of MEI, TSI, and AOD, without any reference to CO2.

In other words, F&R have proven that Climate Change is fully explained by the Multivariate ENSO Index (MEI), the Total Solar Irradiance (PMOD), and the Volcanic Aerosol Optical Depth data (AOD).

In other words, F&R have proven that CO2 has no role in climate change.

All this is very amusing and shows that Foster doesn’t know what he is talking about, or does know what he is talking about and lies. In either case what is left to his defenders, of whom there are many, to say is that good, open minded chap that he is, all he was trying to do was work out whether other things apart from CO2 caused the warming. In that he succeeded.

cohenite – It appears that you have not worked with multiple linear regressions.

F&R 2011 is a very interesting paper, both from the point of view of technique and their conclusions. They found, when regressing time-correlated indices of volcanic aerosols (not, as you have asserted, lower atmosphere anthropogenic pollution aerosols, mind you), solar, and ENSO, that there was a linear residual left over.

Adding that term to the regression led to their results, including some data regarding forcing lag times and influences upon surface versus tropospheric temperature records. This is all clearly discussed in the paper.

And I digress momentarily to wonder at KR’s claim that these 3 independent and exogenous variables can be considered by F&R and KR as not having influence outside the time constraints [from 1979] of the F&R study.

Considering that F&R 2011 is concerned with that period, starting with the satellite records, I have no idea what you are getting at here. The paper is deliberately looking at short term variation influences.

If you wish to look at the longer term, I would suggest Lean and Rind 2008(where they examine the best records of historic forcings 1889 to 2006 and estimate various forcing influences), or for predictive efforts Lean and Rind 2009(where they extrapolate out to the future, assuming IIRC a zero ENSO for centerline purposes).

You are still misrepresenting F&R 2011, and are now tossing ad hominem fallacies around – I’m reluctantly coming to the conclusion that you have not read the paper. And are, hence, talking out of your hat…

Yes, I’m beginning to think we are talking about 2 different papers since your comments certainly don’t apply to the F&R version I’m looking at. The linear trend residue compared to variance has been the focus of this debate since Foster ridiculed McLean’s paper on the issue.

The point F&R assert is that the linear trend explains more of the short termvariance then the [multiple] regressed “other [natural] factors”. This is the opposite of what McLean et al asserted but were castigated by Foster for their methodology.

Now it seems that Foster in trying to prove “anthropogenic” factors are responsible for the short term variance AS WELL AS THE TREND has used some slight of hand which I have explained above.

Instead of making patronising comments about my lack of experience with multiple regression [which I'll gladly admit to] why don’t you address the points made above which is that F&R, by including the trend in the dependent variable as an independent variable with a weighting close to 1.0 [1.024], have removed the dependent variable from both sides of the equation. As Ferd berple notes:

It is a common mathematical sleight of hand that delivers a nonsense result. The equivalent of 0/0, which the layman assumes is equal to one, but every mathematician knows is undefined, because 0/0 = any value. It is one of the oldest mathematical parlor tricks in the book, used to deliver any result you want.

It is one thing to say the paper is looking at “short term variation influences”, it is another to ignore faulty analysis to reach their conclusion.

KR – I have worked on MLR and other types of multiple regression…which doesn’t have to be linear. I even have a peer reviewed paper on MLR (having found it was a better model than MER for that dataset). This work was successfully implemented for a certain multibillion dollar project. And as far as I can tell Cohenite is right.

If F&R included all the significant variables they would have a chance of getting the right answer in a statistical model. But they do not include two of the most statistically significant: ocean cycles and pSCL. If they had done so they would find better agreement. But if they had done so they also would have proved themselves wrong. An interesting Catch 22 problem.

There is a bit of a difficulty with MLR in that the algorithm isn’t good at assigning the variance between two independent variables which accidentally covary – in this case the solar combined effect and the effect of CO2. But if they’d regressed even TSI along with CO2 they would have seen a much larger parameter for TSI than they would have liked. Because TSI and CO2 both rose across the training period of the 20thC. So they force the TSI parameter to be low by fiat. Now for a decade or so they have diverged. As it is most of the solar derived variance is indirect (for which pSCL is a proxy) through the effect on cloudcover. And that is one thing that IPCC modellers don’t want to know. For good reason, as if they let slip that 2XCO2 is in line with Lindzen’s value (as I found) they’d do themselves out of a job.

Of course the other problem with MLR is if you leave out a covarying significant variable (ie pSCL) the algorithm will incorrectly assign all the variance to the other variable (ie pCO2). Which is why the IPCC values for 2XCO2 are so large – the GCM’s are still basically big MR models since they are using some form of regression to fit to the training data.

sillyfilly: D & C acknowledge the global anomaly is 0.14 C in UAH but break this into different latitude bands to attribute the likely causes.The Northern extra Tropics are far higher than everywhere else, so that large effect is obviously not solely due to CO2. In the tropics the swings are largely due to ENSO effects. Hence D &C end up with a number which is slightly less than the tropical trend, and slightly more than the Southern extra tropics. The 0.14C global trend is artificially high due to other factors in the northern hemisphere.

3.2 Latitude effect
We have examined the temperature anomalies at the various latitudes enumerated above for three data sets: HadCRUT3v, and MSU_LT from UAH and from RSS. All show similar behavior. However, as explained above, we only present the results from MSU_LT_UAH.Figure 2 shows the UAH_LT anomalies for NoExtropics, Tropics, SoExtropics and Global. The average trends over the range 1979-2007 are 0.28, 0.08, 0.06 and 0.14 ºK/decade respectively. If the climate forcing were only from CO2 one would expect from property #2 a small variation with latitude. However, it is noted that NoExtropics is 2 times that of the global and 4 times that of the Tropics. Thus one concludes that the climate forcing in the NoExtropics includes more than CO2 forcing. These non-CO2 effects include: land use [Peilke et al. 2007]; industrialization [McKitrick and Michaels (2007), Kalnay and Cai (2003), DeLaat and Maurellis (2006)]; high natural variability, and daily nocturnal effects [Walters et al. (2007)].

So sillyfilly, it seems you are basing your assumption on amalgamated global averages and D&C considered an extra layer of detailed information you ignore.

Certainly, it is interesting that 2010 was so warm despite the presence of a La Niña and a remarkably inactive sun, two factors that have a cooling influence on the planet, but far more important than any particular year’s ranking are the decadal trends,

That is, 2010 was warmer than 2011 and 2010 was a La Nina year, so how can 2011 be the hottest la Nina year?. You guys just make this garbage up and then come back and sniff it like dogs.

A new La Niña episode developed quite quickly in the eastern and central tropical Pacific in mid-2010,[4] and lasted until early 2011.[1] It intensified again in the mid-2011 and is predicted to last at least until early 2012[5]

Mr Pape — a specialist in taxation and administrative law — made headlines in 2009 when he mounted a High Court challenge over Labor’s $42 billion stimulus package, arguing that the $900 payments to individuals exceeded the federal government’s taxation powers.

“Made headlines” : Absolutley.

Won the case? : Not so much.

For a different perspective on the whole “constitutionality thing” so beloved of some of the politically dissatisfied and congenitally grumpy at the moment, this is an interesting read.

What is constitutionally legal and what politicians legislate are not necessarily the same. I’ll bet there are heaps of “unconstitutional” laws that just are simply not challenged for a variety of reasons.

There is no question that the current legislation is a complete and utter dog’s breakfast and will achieve nothing with repesct to its premise … that is to halt climate change (whatever that means). The CO2 tax is simply a woefully inefficient income redistribution scheme which has very little to do with decreasing our relatively miniscule CO2 emissions.

Had Labor simply wished to jiggle the tax brackets somewhat and left it at that, they would have had some credibility, but they just HAD to dress it up as some crusade for the environment, didn’t they?

Bulldust
I think John Howard went through this with the GST
As the Commonwealth has no constitutional rights to impose a
tax on the States , The only way to introduce it (within the Constitution )
Take the tax to an Election ,If they then win the Election .
IE : Campaigning on the introduction of a GST
They then have a mandate ,The States then concede with the mandate and allow the Tax to pass ,
With this Carbon tax the Commonwealth government have no mandate .
Only one state has to disagrees with the tax . Then its unconstitutional.
Eyes East everyone on the 13th of April at the COAG Meeting

They then have a mandate ,The States then concede with the mandate and allow the Tax to pass

Seriously mobilly, you actually think this is the way things work in this country?

That if the States thought they had a case against a particular policy under the constitution, they could and would disregard that on the basis that whoever formed a Federal Govt ran with that policy at an election which they won?

Oh dear……

Nah, your joking, and ive been gullible. No one is stupid enough to actually think that what you wrote 18.2.1.1 is actually true.

A State shall not, without the consent of the Parliament of the Commonwealth, raise or maintain any naval or military force, or impose any tax on property of any kind belonging to the Commonwealth, nor shall the Commonwealth impose any tax on property of any kind belonging to a State.

Despite what Nationals Senator John Williams has said there is nothing about the Carbon Price that breaches section 114. Just because state owned corporations may have to purchase carbon permits does not make the Carbon Price a “tax on property of any kind belonging to a State” any more than the GST or Company Tax does.

My emphasis in the quote.

The second quoted paragraph makes an assumption that Section 114 only refers to tangible fixed assets owned by the State.

But that is not what Section 114 says. It refers to “property of any kind”.

Carbon Dioxide, as a gas, can be considered a “property of any kind” that is owned by the State, whilst it is within the borders of that State. If Carbon Dioxide is produced within the State in the manufacture of goods by various means, or by exhalation of breath from members of the current population, then that becomes the point of origin for the gas, and no other State, nor the Commonwealth, can claim ownership for that Carbon Dioxide, so ergo Carbon Dioxide falls within the definition of “property of any kind belonging to a State”.

I note that Andrew Tiedt is a criminal defence lawyer from Sydney, and I am sure that he is a competent defence lawyer. But there is a lot of difference between criminal law and constitutional law, and that fact should be kept in mind when reading the quoted article.

Land rights under Common Law originally vested the mineral rights with the landowner, and also the sky above said land. In Australia the mineral rights (and presumably the sky) became vested in the Crown, which through Constitution became the Crown as represented by the States on State land and the Federal Government on Fed land.

That is to say … land owndership grants the rights to the minerals below said land and the sky above. This is a basic principle of Common Law, which is in turn the foundation for property rights in Australian law.

Hey I never studied law, but this kind of thing is fairly easy to follow… at least far enough to get the “vibe” of it

Hence by taxing the CO2 emissions in the sky above State land, the Feds are effectively taxing property of the States, which is not permissable under the Constitution. That would be the case in a nutshell as far as I can tell, not having read any of the advice first hand.

I have a reply that got caught in the spam filter due to a premature double-click, but the short answer appears to be “yes.” If the reply doesn’t appear in the next few hours I shall blog it again (it was off-the-cuff, so I don’t have a copy handy).

I believe it was “emissions” that would be taxed, therefore it has to come out first, and belong to the state. Even if they try to change the wording or description, they can hardly tax something that hasn’t happened yet.

How sad is it that we are reduced to hoping lawyers can find a loophole in the Constitution to stop this legislation, whereas from the very beginning we should not have had a bill introduced to our parliament based entirely on unproven pseudoscience nonsense.

What, pointing to the unwavering and fully intact sky is considered so flimsy in defense that we need a lawyer to argue that it’s unconstitutional for the Commonwealth to tax invisible fragments of falling sky?

I suppose that using your own weasel words, you are technically correct, because really, it is a Carbon Dioxide Tax, even though everybody, including Dear leader and her Ministers are using the Carbon Tax wording now.

However, while the concentration is on CO2, there are in fact 24 gases that are being TAXED.

The following is a link to an image of the list of those gases. This is taken from the proposed Australian Legislation, and is the original from the UNFCC, now adopted by the UNIPCC as the Standard.

All those gases are listed and the multiplier is the supposed equivalence with respect to CO2, and in Oz, that means you multiply the $23 per ton by that larger number.

Now, while those emissions of CO2 from the largest source (electrical power generation at 45%) will be passed directly down to all consumers of electricity, then the same applies for every one of those other gases.

As your side is always so apt to quote, there will be compensation. However that compensation is only for some, and is only to just cover the expected increase in their electricity bill due to the imposition of this HUGE NEW TAX. That compensation is directed to some, but only for the increase to their residential electricity account, and that residential sector only makes up 38% of all power consumed.

There is no compensation in those other two sectors, so their electricity cost increases will also need to be covered, hence the cost of everything will rise, and here think of Coles and Woolies for your weekly shop. Their power bill is probably hundreds of times greater than your household power bill, so that increase will be hundreds of times larger as well. The same will apply with everything you purchase from now on, as those in the Commerce (37%) and Industrial (24%) Sectors pass on their increased costs.

That covers just the CO2 emissions.

Note Methane and its multiplier of 21. All homes now on Natural Gas, be it bottled or town supplied, will also see rises in the costs associated with the supply of that gas, as the suppliers themselves will be TAXED, and they too will pass on those increased costs to all their consumers.

Also, with respect to Methane, think landfills, and now for any trip to the dump you make you will be charged. This also of those Charity outlets, who also have huge amounts that have to be dumped, and anecdotally, one of them now says that their bill just to take stuff to the dump will rise by tens of thousands of doallrs a year, hence even outlets like Vinnies, The Salvos, etc will also be putting up their prices, on top of their increased electricity costs.

Also, when it comes to Methane, think crop farming and ruminant animal grazing, and with the advent of the ETS after three years, this legislation will also be going after them. As part of this, specialists with regard to all the admin will also be required to be used, unless you don’t mind a visit from the Carbon Cops, and the Legislation has in place hundreds of pages devoted to penalties for not getting it right.

Then on top of all that, the ETS will also take its hit as well.

As to those other gases, think refrigeration just for one of those gases listed there, as all those suppliers will be TAXED, and they will pass on the costs for that. Here, think refrigerators, freezers and Aircon units as all new ones need gassing prior to delivery to retailers. Here also think of every building you can see that is taller than three levels and by law has to have airconditioning to supply breathing air inside those buildings. Each one of them will pay the hefty TAX whenever those units need servicing.

For refrigeration, think again of Coles and Woolies and their vast banks of cold storage in every one of their outlets, and the gas required to service them.

Now, while those gases are nowhere near as huge as CO2, you can see by those multipliers that a fortune will be made by this Government just by costing these gases.

Note how they are not telling these people to stop using those gases because it will lead to a catastrophe of monumental proportions.

No Maxine, all they ARE doing is imposing a HUGE NEW TAX, not on those emitting entities, but in fact, on every one of us citizens here in Australia, and then magnanimously saying that there will be compensation for some of you.

The feedback issue is highly important, and discussion was carefully avoided in the 2007 AR4 report.
There is another area that is also important in promoting the influence of CO2 on warming – aerosols.

I have done a quick analysis of the IPCCs table of radiative forcings and found.

1. The numbers don’t add up. (This is the first thing that beancounter’s check!)
2. The impact of aerosols and other negative forcings nicely cancel out the impact of all the anthropogenic greenhouse gases, with the exception of CO2. Makes the argument much simpler.
3. The totals error spread of the positive and negative forcings looks suspicious due to the nice round figures derived.

But one thing Maxine, weather is not climate – as any proper climate scientist will inform you. However, extreme events can be an indicator of climate when they follow a pattern. The heavy snowfalls and recent extreme tornado activity were last seen about 60 years ago – part of natural cycles.

You could have told this to Tim Flannery and maybe I wouldn’t have to be paying for a Desal plant…
But I guess at that stage you probably agreed with the experts (such as CSIRO) that we were in a permanent drought thanks to global warming.

Hindsight is 20/20 Maxine. Also doesn’t more “precipitation” mean more cloud cover? And clouds cool the earth?

Hey Maxine, just because you can tell us what DID happen and then blame it on AGW doesn’t make you that special.

No? Umm.. but I saw KRs link and thought it useful in this context. I could have applied any number of fallacies to Maxine’s argument – and I don’t know which one was the best really. Anyway, if I had done that I’d be guilty of the fallacy of “Argument by labeling another argument a fallacy”!

You go bananas over a region and say it is proof of (AGW) global warming and that is why you people are stupid.Never mind that it was the only major above average temperature area in Northern Hemisphere.

What is next?….. the hottest month on record for Desert Aire Washington and call that proof of (AGW) global warming…….

… Or perhaps the hottest on record, tenth second of the fortieth minute of the seventeenth hour of the tenth day of the forth month of the year 2012… Incontrovertible proof for the likes of Sillyfilly and Co. of AGW…;-)

Sparse? Very. But they use “extrapolation”. California was well settled then. And even the Western non-coastal states had pockets of population so that there are readings from every state (and the ones that were still territories) at that time.

Although the US temperature data set is considered the “gold standard” for the entire world it is unreliable. As Anthony Watts has shown very few of the temperature measurement stations pass muster. I’m sure it comes as no surprise to most of the regular commenters to this site that if you use rural stations that are sited properly then “global warming” virtually disappears.

Unfortunately, the proponents of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming cannot get rid of the medieval warm period. During this interglacial temperatures peaked in the Bronze Age and have been going down since. Yet, CO2 levels keep rising. The warmist always neglect to mention that. Instead, they employ an endpoint fallacy in starting their measurements at the point where we exited the Little Ice Age.

I wonder how much longer it will be until people refer to fraudulent adjustment of data as “hansening”!

For those living down under, the US consists of 50 states. Not 48, not 49. And while it was a gorgeous march in the lower 48, the addition of Alaska makes it just another run of the mill – AVERAGE March.

I only had to blow snow three times and the gardens are popping up already. Border lakes lost their ice over a month early. I’d estimate we saved 20-30% in heating costs this season.

Global warming? Nope. It was as though the global “winter cap” slipped over to the Russian states. It would be interesting to see what forces set up the Jet Stream this winter. There’s a wobble somewhere in the “well understood” systems.

They should change the name from “global warming” to “2012 March in USA warming” and still go about their business of implementing global taxes while the rest of the world struggles to pay their heating bills.

can’t recall anyone posting this utterly misleading and deceitful story emanating from the Smithsonian Magazine:

4 April: Yahoo: AP: Next Great Depression? MIT study predicting ‘global economic collapse’ by 2030 still on track
A renowned Australian research scientist says a study from researchers at MIT claiming the world could suffer from a “global economic collapse” and “precipitous population decline” if people continue to consume the world’s resources at the current pace is still on track, nearly 40 years after it was first produced.
The Smithsonian Magazine writes that Australian physicist Graham Turner says “the world is on track for disaster” and that current research from Turner coincides with a famous, and in some quarters, infamous, academic report from 1972 entitled, “The Limits to Growth.” Turner’s research is not affiliated with MIT or The Club for Rome…
***However, the study said “unlimited economic growth” is still possible if world governments enact policies and invest in green technologies that help limit the expansion of our ecological footprint…
Turner says that perhaps the most startling find from the study is that the results of the computer scenarios were nearly identical to those predicted in similar computer scenarios used as the basis for “The Limits to Growth.”
“There is a very clear warning bell being rung here,” Turner said. “We are not on a sustainable trajectory.”…
Correction: This post has been edited to reflect that MIT has not updated its research from the original 1972 study.http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/next-great-depression-mit-researchers-predict-global-economic-190352944.html

April 2012: Smithsonian Magazine: Mark Strauss: Looking Back on the Limits of Growth
Forty years after the release of the groundbreaking study, were the concerns about overpopulation and the environment correct?
However, the study also noted that unlimited economic growth was possible, if governments forged policies and invested in technologies to regulate the expansion of humanity’s ecological footprint. Prominent economists disagreed with the report’s methodology and conclusions. Yale’s Henry Wallich opposed active intervention, declaring that limiting economic growth too soon would be “consigning billions to permanent poverty.”
Turner compared real-world data from 1970 to 2000 with the business-as-usual scenario…http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/Looking-Back-on-the-Limits-of-Growth.html

surely the Smithsonian is not referring to the CSIRO’s June 2008 nonsense by Turner!

this garbage is all over certain websites as MIT researchers say, Smithsonian says, etc., but it’a all BS.
an example:

6 April: Popular Science, Australia: Rebecca Boyle: MIT Predicts That World Economy Will Collapse By 2030
Is this impossible to fix? No, according to both Turner and the original study. If governments enact stricter policies and technologies can be improved to reduce our environmental footprint, economic growth doesn’t have to become a market white dwarf, marching toward inevitable implosion…http://www.popsci.com.au/science/mit-predicts-that-world-economy-will-collapse-by-2030

If population crashes as they suggest it will be through deliberate interventions of the very people proposing the “limits to growth” philosophy, aided and abetted by the likes of the trolls we see above. I hope they are well paid in carbon credits to ease their conscience. I notice that it is a common tactic of the manipulative person to accuse those against them of the very actions or effects they have provoked. This is the pathognomonic sign of the inveterate liar, because that is the only way they can keep their stories straight, by inverting the actions or effects of the victim with that of the victimiser.

I think the UAH satellite data shows some distinct features, but certainly nothing that can be described by a linear trend. From 1979 to 1997 a period of oscillations with no significant variation in the mean. Then, in 1997 a step up (El Nino)which lasts for about 2 years. Then another period with (smaller) oscillations about a roughly constant mean about 0.3C higher than before the step up. In the past few years the oscillations have been increasing in magnitude with probably a decreasing mean (too early to say); so maybe returning to the pre-El Nino behaviour. This is the kind of thing you see in double pendulum studies. So it seems to me that some kind of coupled oscillator behaviour is being seen.

While this has been happening atmospheric CO2 has been steadily increasing. If variation in temperature is being controlled by CO2 it should show a steady linear increase, with maybe some minor fluctuations about a rising trend. But we don’t see that.

The average UAH temperature for the last two months is almost exactly the average over the period from 1979 to now. So if CO2 is contributing to warming it must be very small compared to the natural processes which determine the overall behaviour.

The PDO sinusoidal doesn’t seem to be as strong, but that may be because it is more local to the Nth Pacific. Note while the period is about the same, the phase isn’t, because the different indices measure quite different parameters.

I’ve been refreshing my memory about coupled oscillators and it’s pretty quickly obvious why this climate modelling can’t work. Even for a simple system like a double pendulum with fixed and known properties the behaviour is highly complex and to deduce what is going on from observation of a single variable (say, position of the end of the second pendulum)
would be very hard.

But if we had five (six?) coupled oscillators like pendulums with unknown properties which changed all the time and warmed up and cooled down regularly it’s clearly hopeless. It’s extraordinary that anything works at all.

There seems to be a lot of buzz going around the solar gurus that the peak of the current cycle has happened. Today not one blemish on old Sol and the magnets are winding down for a switch. If this is the case it will be the pussiest solar cycle since the Maunder minimum.

Ooh err yea, and NASA’s Hathaway has been winding back his “predictions” to take account of reality. In fact is Hathaway capable of predicting anything? NASA’s latest statement says –
“The current prediction for Sunspot Cycle 24 gives a smoothed sunspot number maximum of about 61 in the Spring of 2013.”- NASA’s Swing Speculation Central

I prefer the predictions of Хабибулло Исмаилович Абдусаматов (Abdussamatov), who is the head of the Space Research Laboratory at Pulkovo Observatory, and supervisor of the Russian project section of the International Space Station
- Project Astrometria

Springer below is the guy in the Ch9 interview (with its NatGeo inserts):

Alien Invasion: How to Defend Earth by Travis S. Taylor & Bob Boan – Baen Books – Foreword
Paul Springer, of the Air Force’s Air Command and Staff College, confidently told us this: “In the case of a global invader, the United States has a multitude of plans. We have war-gamed out every scenario possible.”
Nick Pope, formerly of the British Ministry of Defense, said this: “With my twenty-two years at the Ministry of Defense, I’ve clearly gained an insight into how we might fight an alien invasion. Unfortunately, most of that is classified information.”
Are the governments and military elites of the world actually preparing for an alien invasion?
It’s hard to tell.
Tim Evans
Supervising Producer
National Geographic’s When Aliens Attackhttp://www.baenebooks.com/chapters/9781439134429/9781439134429.htm

Amazon: June 2011: Alien Invasion: The Ultimate Survival Guide for the Ultimate Attack
Drs. Travis S. Taylor and Bob Boan have the answers. Both are experienced scientists, physicists with expertise in both defense and military signal intelligence and experience working with both the Department of Defense and NASA. These are intellectual heavyweights who have a clear idea of the possibilities of alien contact, the calculations of whether or not that contact will be friendly…and what to do if it’s not.http://www.amazon.com/Alien-Invasion-Ultimate-Survival-Attack/dp/1439134421

i’ve said on WUWT previously that all these Alien stories appearing of late in the MSM appear to be orchestrated, and the Ch9 interview with it’s bunny logo and grinning hostess bringing up the old myth about how humans will band together (under One World Govt no doubt) to face the alien threat blah blah seems to bear this out. insane as Bob Brown.

Matt pulls the threadbare Milankovitch argument out the hat once again. Let’s put some definite figures on that statement, shall we? I think the question all boils down to, how much of a globally averaged change in solar irradiance do Milankovitch cycles typically produce? Wikipedia (a notoriously pro-CAGW website) says: “The change in temperature, revealed in ice core samples, is 5 °C, while the change in solar forcing is 7.1 W/m2. The computed climate sensitivity is therefore 5/7.1 = 0.7K (W/m2).” A radiative forcing (RF) of 7.1W/sq.m on a baseline temperature of 283C (5C lower) corresponds to a temperature increase of 1.4C – that’s apparently how much of a temperature increase Milankovitch cycles produce for switching the climate-systems between cold and warm states that are relative stable (i.e. ice-ages and interglacials). However the actual temperature increase observed in the ice-core data, as mentioned above, is 5C, which means positive feedbacks are responsible for about 3.6C leaving Milankovitch cycles with only 1.4C. But how does the weaker RF from the Milankovitch cycle overwhelm the much stronger RF from greenhouse gases to initiate ice-ages when they produce almost 3 times less RF? It’s a mathematical impossibility, is it not?

People talk about these Cycles as though they were some pre-ordained course of events, but in reality they are simply a pattern of vague similarities that Milankovitch found in past observations. There is no absolute guarantee that the future will be like the past, though some people think that Milankovitch was some kind of Nostradamus figure.

Why not take it all the way back to the beginning of the industrial revolution when we first began to spew CO2 into the air? Since 1850 Temperatures have gone up somewhere around 0.7°C and CO2 during that same time went up 40% If the IPCC’s claim of a climate sensitivity of 3.2° per doubling of CO2 were correct, temperatures should have gone up nearly double what they have in all that time. They did’n't, the models are wrong.

One can only hope that reason will prevail and Hansen will get booted but I wouldn’t bet a large sum of money on it. He, along with Al Gore and the IPCC scientists, should be tarred and feathered and sent to the South Pole to observe climate change firsthand.

Neville that story on WUWT is notable for MUCH more than the dig at Hansen.

Folks, that’s a letter signed by 49 current and former NASA engineers, scientists, managers, and astronauts, telling NASA to stop making unproven statements about climate change and get back to the evidence of natural causation.

I added up how many years of NASA experience is behind those signatures, it is at least 1124 years!
It’s not just authority or playing the consensus game, they aren’t advocating policy, they’re bringing verifiable evidence back into the decision process.

There goes the consensus. Oh my gosh, guess there never was one to begin with. Most of the people who signed the letter are retired. I would guess that they feared for their jobs while they were still working, especially since Hansen is head of GISS.

I have been attempting to post Comments since Thursday night, all to no avail, and I’ve finally attempted something that actually worked.

With this attempt, I did not include the link to my Website as part of my screen name, and the comment appeared. As soon as I attempted to ‘reply’ I added the Website and that reply vanished into the ether.

I notice that some people are getting through with website links attached to their screen names, so it’s a mystery.

For all you others, sorry to bore you with this, but I’ve been trying for 6 days now, all to no avail. I thought it may have been a maintenance thing.

I sent you an email yesterday with what I believe is an important scoop. It is even more relevant now because this monrning’s Australian says Campbell Newman is seeking legal advice regarding challenging the CO2 tax. What I have might help.

My scoop is from a top world expert. He stated words to the effect:the benefit of the Australian CO2 tax and ETS is effectively zero given that Australia would be, in effect, acting alone.

I had to fill in my details to post on Jo Nova this morning, but ususally I don’t have to.

Also, A while ago I had to re register to post on BNC. Since then I have a WordPress banner across the top of the thread when on BNC and on some other WordPress sites, but not this one.

Worst of all is the bahaviour on “The Conversation”. I sent this message to the Conversation this morning because I heard someone else was also having a problem on that site:

If I try to get into TC threads that I’ve posted comments on in the past, the web page opens then shuts down almost immediately. This process is repeated, seemingly indefinitely. This behaviour occurs on most of the TC threads I’ve posted on in the past. I have not experienced this with any other web site. However, When I open a TC web page and it shuts down, some other WordPress web pages that I have open at the time also get shut down.

This has been going on for about two week or longer. Occasionally I can get back into a thread I’ve posted on in the past, but usually not.

I had concluded I had a bug on my computer and spent considerable time trying to clean my computer. Then I heard that XXXX is also having problems.

Can you tell me if this is an intentional behaviour? Am I being excluded intentionally? If this is the case, then I’d prefer to be told outright.

I had to fill in my details to post on Jo Nova this morning, but usually I don’t have to.

This is SOP in my case. While ever your computer is turned on and you are online, those details only need to be filled in that original time, and then for all subsequent Comments, all your details are there.

However, go offline, or turn off your Computer, and you will need to fill in those details again the next time you wish to comment.

11 April: ABC: Big Ideas: Beyond populist politics and policies
Presented by Paul Barclay
Guests:
Josh Frydenberg, Liberal Federal Member for Kooyong
Andrew Leigh, Labor Federal Member for Fraser
Rebecca Wilson, Policy Manager in the Office of the Lord Mayor of the City of Sydney.
Eric Knight, an economics consultant and author of the book “Reframe: How to solve the world’s trickiest problems”http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/bigideas/popolist-politics/3898774

at 44.38: Barclay: Can we assume all the panel believe in human-induced climate change? OK that’s good. Didn’t want to get derailed, that’s all. (giggle giggle) Every decade since the 40s has been hotter than the previous decade, polar caps melting…

49.50 Josh Freydenberg: Criticises pachauri,says East Anglia saga undermined the case, believes in Climate Change but Coalition has different approach, have own policy…not a left/right issue. Thatcher, Reagan were concerned about environment.

51.42 Barclay: One member of parliament who was willing to give up leadership of a party on a matter of principle, malcolm turnbull, who had agreed to put a price on carbon. Not a coincidence that labor/liberal supporters alike come up to you on the street and say the politician they have most respect for more than anyone else is malcolm turnbull. he’s sacrificed political ambition for a matter of conviction. does that tell us something?

You are locked into staying in the house for the duration of the payback time for these panels.

Now be aware of the cost, because no matter what you are told, they are not as cheap as they are made out to be, as this chart shows. (Scroll down a little to the image that says ‘View Our Grid Feed Pricing Guide’ and click on the image, and the costing chart will appear.

The average home consumes 20KWH per day, and look mid chart there and the all up cost is 25K pre Government subsidy, (which every other consumer of electricity pays)

Then, the only way they can make them viable is to offer feed in tariffs, double and triple what households pay for their grid supplied electricity, and this also is paid for by every other consumer of electricity in the increased cost per unit of electricity (KWH).

So now the residence that fits rooftop solar power is locked into staying in that home for the duration of the loan for the installation. That original subsidy and then the feed in subsidy will pay off the original installation in around 20 to 25 years which, if those panels are kept spotlessly pristine all the time may last for that 20 to 25 years.

Either way, the residence is still a net consumer of power FROM the grid. You either run your house or sell it back to the grid, but you can’t have both.

So, you stay in the house for that 20 to 25 years, and then, tired of the home, you sell up. So now you have to pay to have it (legally) removed.

Sell up part way through and it’s not an improvement to the home that will add value, because now there is even less time left on that original installation cost repayment.

See how this is a con, coming and going.

Now it seems that even the banks are balking at adding to the mortgage to cover the cost of that installation.

And the worst part of it is the smugness of rooftop panel owners, people who rely on others to pay for their own smugness.

Who is “we”? It is amazing that we’d have the technology or $$$ to adapt when we barely have the $$ to feed the masses today.

For once I agree with MattB – but then have to turn around and ask him why are we wasting TRILLIONS on something that may never come to pass, has no intrinsic value, and is depriving the masses of $$ for food TODAY? The only people profiting from the hysteria are the high priests of alarmism, and last I checked, they were not taking their ill gotten gains and donating them to anyone but their realtors.

this whole thing just stopped. I did not see wholesale agreement nor extra supporting evidence, I suppose you are all happy with this and have moved on but really, the science here is … ummm… not very conclusive.